


The Bridge

by galeaspida



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Builds On Canon, Dancing, Eventual Romance, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mysterious quests, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22653649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galeaspida/pseuds/galeaspida
Summary: Completed. An unwelcome reminder of Yennefer's past appears at the royal wedding feast at Aedirn in 1336 and she finds herself caught up in a mysterious hunt that causes her to examine her feelings towards her travelling companion. Tissaia/Yennefer. As canonical as possible to the show, pulling some lore from the books.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 340
Kudos: 576





	1. The Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a 5000 word one-shot, until it wasn’t.

Yennefer is already drunk when the wedding toasts begin. 

It's taken three goblets of Lyrian ice cider - deliciously sharp and as strong as anything she's ever tasted - to bring her to the point of being able to almost forget that the new queen of Aedirn - the most irritating and vapid girl she has ever met - will be a permanent fixture at court and in her life from this point forward.

At the high table, Virfuril is toasting his bride’s father, the King of Lyria. Virfirul’s beard is grey and his hair thinning at the top - no longer the handsome king that Yennefer had joined three decades earlier. Beside him, his new wife - dressed in a ridiculously bright dress - is giggling inanely with her mother about something or other. 

Up until the summer there had been some faint hope that Princess Kalis of Lyria would not marry King Virfuril. After all, envoys for Aedirn and Lyria worked for two years before agreement could be reached on the dowry and trade concessions. The match was a sound one politically; Kalis was a princess of childbearing age, and had an impressive dowry of gold and fine horses. Virfirul required an heir to the kingdom of Aedirn; his first wife having died giving birth to a girl child three winters before, and needed another martial ally after Kaedwinian relations had failed yet again. 

Yennefer had washed her hands of the business two weeks into negotiations when it became apparent that neither side was willing to concede any ground. She had returned to Aedirn and her life at court and paid no mind to news of marriage contracts, preoccupied with the day-to-day commotion as the only mage in Aedirn. Evidently an impartial party had been brought in during the spring and worked out a deal in Lyria with representatives from Aedirn that was acceptable to both kingdoms. Yennefer has no interest in learning how they had achieved the impossible, but if she ever finds out who the neutral party is, she is going to subject them to unimaginable pain for inflicting the foolish Kalis on the Aedirnians and Yennefer.

Virfuril has finished his toast. Around the hall, servants clad in white tunics are clearing the plates of the guests and refilling goblets. The King of Lyria - short, paunchy and red-faced - rises and begins to speak, and Yennefer’s mind begins to wander again. 

A grinding of teeth at her feet makes her glance under the table. Virfuril’s grey-muzzled deerhound Nestor has found a ham hock and is gnawing on it, crouched by Yennefer’s shoes. A whispered word in Elder sets the huge dog to sleep. She’d happily do the same to the guests and escape the tedium of the evening, but she knows it will not end anytime soon. 

Fagin, the castle steward, is standing near the high table, wearing long white robes. The man looks more relaxed than she has seen him for many months. To his credit, much of the wedding was his doing. The city of Vengerberg had been invaded by a dozen master craftsmen and scores of their assistants as soon as the date for the wedding had been set, preparing for the ceremony. The flurry of activity around the castle left everyone flustered, and irritated Yennefer to no end. More than once she has seen Fagin pass by her in the halls muttering under his breath about unreasonable timelines of dwarven craftsmen and the difficulties about getting wagons of spices and sugar shipped up from Nazair. The stress turned Fagin’s rapidly receding hairline into full-blown baldness, and left him with a perpetually twitchy eyelid.

Tuning out the self-important rambling of the Lyrian king, Yennefer raises her eyes to look about the room. The massive interior of the Great Hall is lit by thousands of clear glass ornaments, hung in cascades of shimmering droplets from the high ceiling. Softly glowing candles adorn each chandelier, lighting up the feast below. The stone walls are covered by twelve silver-thread-embroidered scenes on silk from the history of Aedirn and of Lyria, each tapestry spanning ten yards wide. Guards in shining breastplates line the walls, their presence making the room even more crowded. There are nearly three hundred nobles and visiting dignitaries here, though the identities are more challenging to piece out; Virfuril had insisted on guests wearing masks, as the wedding coincides with the Aedirn Carnival of Harvest and its traditional masquerade. 

Yennefer has been keeping watch one of the men she recognizes - the Redanian envoy for King Vizimir is sitting at the opposite table, the captain of the Temerian army sitting beside him representing King Foltest. The former is a small man with unassuming features, but Yennefer is well aware that he is the newest head of the Redanian Secret Service and possibly the most dangerous man in the room. She has done her best to keep him in her sight since he arrived alone that afternoon. 

The Lyrian King is finished his babbling, and Virfuril leans over to kiss his new wife.

Virfuril doesn't love Kalis, Yennefer is certain of that. He loves his prized pack of hunting hounds, and his stable of fast horses, and has a regular stream of eager women who come to him in the evenings through the back entrance to the castle, blushing at the thought of bedding a king, even an aging one. Yennefer has made more potions to rid those women of an unwanted pregnancy than the rest of the court put together.

It will be potions for fertility now, she thinks, and lots of them. Virfuril had insisted on Queen Illen’s daily dose four years earlier, and Yennefer cannot exclude the possibility that it was what had led to her delivery being months too early and killing her and the child both. She had got on well with Queen Illen, for her part, and had been sorry to lose her gentle presence in the castle.

Virfuril had been expressionless when told that his wife had died giving birth to a stillborn daughter. 

_‘What use has Aedirn for a girl?’_

He had gone hunting that same afternoon, leaving the funeral arrangements for Fagin to arrange. 

\----

The speeches are finished. Tables and benches in the lower levels are already being moved outwards by the serving staff, making a larger space in the center of the room. The guests are retreating to the edges, knowing what will come next. 

Yennefer feels a tap against her shoulder by one of Fagin’s staff. This will be the first dance of the night with his queen and Virfuril only wants the most skilled on the floor with him. Dancing had won her a place here all those years ago, and Yennefer remains Virfuril’s preferred partner. But not tonight.

The strings of freshwater pearls at Yennefer’s throat rustle as she sets her empty goblet back on the table next to her plate and stands, brushing by the tall man on her left as she leaves her seat. He smiles at her as she passes, inclining his head in acknowledgement, lifting up the edge of his feather-covered mask so that she can see his face. He is very handsome, with the dark skin of a Southerner, and the interest from him is clear even with a hazy mind.

Yennefer’s own half mask is made of dark lace, matching the velvet of her dress. The black fabric is sliced intricately to show the smooth white silk layer underneath, the bodice revealing enough skin that there is no chance of overheating in the warm room. Yennefer has already had appreciative glances from both men and women during the feast, and is idly considering who she might invite back to her room after the evening winds to a close. She’s yet to have anyone refuse her, and never needed to resort to a charm to entice another into her bed.

Blood runs hot during weddings, even for the guests, and Yennefer is no exception. 

The chosen dancers assemble on the marble floor and split into two lines, the king and queen at the head of each. Yennefer joins Virfuril’s line, the only woman in the line of men - eccentricity is expected of mages, after all. She plans to keep an eye on the Redanian for as long as she can.

She finds herself standing opposite a woman in a green dress, wearing an intricate half-mask made from beaten bronze. Her facial features are disguised, but the slender build, clear-cut jaw, and lighter complexion gives her away as one of the guests from Lyria.

For such a small kingdom, there are certainly a lot of Lyrian nobles.

After a moment of discussion with the court steward, the minstrels begin a new song in a minor key. Yennefer has heard many variations of it during her time at court, and has a faint memory of farmer whistling it roughly when selling cattle at market. 

The zither leads with the central melody - plucking out the mournful opening notes of a moderately-paced waltz. The pair of lute players join in several measures in, the bowed viol playing the underlying foundation, and a man with a set of delicate silver bells provides accents. 

The tune is an old one, and is only ever danced by nobility. It flows between changing circular patterns that weave in and out of each other, the partnered dancers changing between closed and open positions. Increasing groups of fours and eights and then a circle within a circle, followed by one large wheel with all twenty-four dancers. Halfway through the dance, the three-beat melody will slow, pause, and after the hesitation in the music, the dancers will reverse direction through the sets of forms, into smaller and smaller circles as the waltz winds to a close.

It is the Dance of the Spheres, and it is the oldest dance on the continent, and the first one she ever learned. 

(Before Aedirn, before Virfuril, back when her gait was a lurching swing and her shoulders an uneven slope, and life was generally miserable, Yennefer had lasted all of an hour under the sneering gaze of Aretuza’s dancing tutor before retreating to Istredd and the cool walls in Thanedd. They'd waltzed around the ancient bones in the Tower of the Gull, tripping over each other’s feet until she’d got the pattern down. When she presented herself to the Rectoress the following week, it was evident that Istredd had not been as accurate with the steps as would be expected of a court mage. After many evenings of rigorous practice in her office, weathering her teacher’s exacting demands, Yennefer had finally felt comfortable with the intricate steps.) 

The set begins and all the dancers step forward in the three beats to meet their partners. Yennefer joins hands with the Lyrian woman in green, and they spin together in the flow of up and down steps to join a pair three rows down to form the first circle. Reversing their grip above their heads, releasing after revolving for two turns, and closing the pattern to form a small circle of four dancers to their left, where they will orbit the center grouping of Virfuril and Kalis. 

Yennefer may be drunk, but she’s danced this waltz dozens of times since becoming court mage and could do it blindfolded, with the worst of partners.

But, as they change into the second stage of the pattern - now in groups of eight, the three-beat rhythm of the melody quickening, the steps faster - it has become clear that the Lyrian woman is one of the better dancers Yennefer has ever seen. Graceful and precise in her movements, her slender body flows from one step to the next, never putting a foot wrong, moving at the slightest touch of Yennefer’s hand on her ribs. 

Yennefer’s eyes drift downwards, curious, as the woman spins away to form the larger group of twelve. Her gown of thick silk is the same colour as the deep ocean in mid-morning sun, with glass seed beading throughout the bodice that glistens in the light from the candles above. The pale bosom hinted at by the dress’s neckline is spectacular, and the woman's throat is bare of any necklace, her wrists similarly unadorned. The only jewelry she wears is a pair of simple emerald earrings, flashing against the darkness of her braided hair.

Desire begins to warm Yennefer’s belly when her partner returns to her arms. She can feel the pull of the muscles in the Lyrian’s woman torso as they spin, her hand around her narrow waist. Yennefer is taller by a handful of inches and yet the difference in height makes the partnership feel well-matched. The clear scent she is wearing is unfamiliar and applied sparingly enough that Yennefer can only catch it when she is holding the other woman close, but she smells divine.

(This is the one she’ll invite to her bedchambers after the evening is over, Yennefer's decided. If the woman is this skilled at dancing, she’ll make a wonderfully responsive lover. 

They part, circle around the partnering dancers, and then return - joining hands without hesitation to form the full circle of twenty four. All the dancers pause as the crescendo of music is drawn out into a long hung note by the viol, a mournful echo of the pause of the merged spheres.

A count of four bars. Yennefer takes in a steadying breath. The alcohol has left her a little dazed, and the arousal she is feeling is not centering her mind at all. She’s distracted, and she’d meant to keep an eye on the Redanian. 

And then there are the slow steps as the pattern reverses. The dancers split into the two forms again and weave the circles through each other with perfect timing. 

It strikes her when they join together again, closing their positions until their chests are almost touching. Something about this woman is familiar to her. The hand at her right shoulder, the other in her left, the ease of it - of their movement together - is _unnatural_. She's ever-aware of where the woman’s body is in her space at any given time. 

Yennefer suspects they could both be blindfolded and not miss a step.

They slowly spin around the remaining couple in their group of four. The tune is slowing, the clear sound fading as the musicians approach the end of the song, the last pattern almost completed. 

(She has danced with this woman before. She is _certain_ of it.)

One final turn, Yennefer's fingers against the woman's ribs, controlling their direction as they step back to the center of the floor in the flowing three-beat rhythm and then spin apart so that the two lines are reformed, the partners facing each other again. 

The zither is the only sound now, echoing the melody one last time.

Silence. 

Yennefer is left staring lustfully at the woman she’s known all of a handful of minutes. The mask covers the bridge of the woman’s nose and brow, and Yennefer cannot piece together these glimpses into a recognizable memory. Her partner is still catching her breath from the dance, but her posture is perfect, her sharp chin lifted proudly.

Yennefer is startled out of her reverie by the applause around her. The Lyrian woman is clapping politely with the rest of the dancers and the crowd, both lines turning to face the King and Queen. 

Curious, she sends out her thoughts to probe the mysterious woman’s consciousness for answers... 

...and her thoughts immediately ricochet back at her with the force of a hammer blow. Yennefer is staggered off-balance by the sudden block, her hand rising to steady her head from the pain of the strike. 

The woman is gazing at Yennefer.

Blood is pounding in Yennefer’s ears and her vision has dark spots along the edges. A mental barrier means a mage, and a _powerful_ one. And who could hide from her so well, without her knowing..?

‘Thank you for the dance, Yennefer.’

The precise voice strikes untold horrors into Yennefer's heart, and her eyes widen in shock. Everything is oh-so-familiar now, every feature; the thin lips, the defined cheekbones and clear-cut jaw, the bright blue eyes behind the mask. The hair is different - darker than it was, than it should be - but even with thirty years since she last saw her face - how could Yennefer _forget_?

(She knows how. Consciously quelling any memory of the one who bought her for a pittance all those years ago. Actively forgetting anything related to her old self or the course that her life had taken in Aretuza. Pushing away any communication and never replying to the handful of letters that arrived from the woman now standing in front of her). 

Tissaia de Vries had been the one who had taught her how to block invading minds from picking out her thoughts - it had been a key component of her allowed interactions with Stregabor’s apprentice. Mutual spying for their masters, each withholding information from the other under the pretense of a young romance.

Yennefer stands very still, her jaw tight with clenched muscle, her teeth clamped shut. The other guests are returning to seats and tables, and the musicians have launched into a reel. Another dance will be coming after refreshments are allowed.

(Tissaia has not removed her mask.)

'You did not recognize me,’ she says, stepping closer so that she is an arm’s length away from Yennefer. The rebuke is clear in the clipped words, the hard gaze. 

Yennefer's hands are shaking, and she closes her fingers into fists, temporarily speechless. How _dare_ this woman reappear after thirty years and make her feel every confusing emotion she is feeling at this moment. She’d been ready to take her to her bedchamber only a minute ago, and her stomach churns when she thinks of what would have happened if she’d suggested it.

‘Mage.’

They both turn towards the man’s voice, Yennefer gratefully welcoming the interruption. Virfuril is walking towards them through the mingling crowd and resting dancers, a goblet in his hand. His mask wrought from fine gold filigree, matching his crown, and his silk doublet is heavily embroidered with stags in gold thread. He is still breathing hard from the dance. 

Tissaia’s greeting curtsy is low - too low to be appropriate from a mage of her standing, even to a king. 

There is something else at play here - she’s pretending. Masking her magic with barriers so that Yennefer couldn't detect even a spark from her over the ten minutes she had her in her arms.

'Rectoress, you have met the terms of our bargain.'

So Virfuril is aware of her disguise - and did not tell Yennefer. She tamps down the surge of anger that rises. He should know better than to keep secrets from someone who is charged with his protection. 

'Yennefer. A matter of political importance has arisen and I require you to attend as a representative of Aedirn. You leave with the Rectoress tomorrow, and shall obey her wishes as if they came from me.'

Refusing to let her shock show, pushing down the wave of nausea in her belly. Yennefer unsticks her clenched molars and smooths her mouth into a demure smile. 

‘Of course, your Majesty,’ she says warmly. ‘How long shall I be away from your court?'

‘I shall be returning from my hunt in Lyria at the end of the month,’ Virfuril sniffs. ‘I expect to see you here with news of your task.'

‘Exactly what am I being sent to do?’ Yennefer spits out once Virfuril is out of earshot, turning to glare at the woman beside her. 'And what are you doing here in the first place, instead of lurking in your precious Aretuza?'

The woman’s expression is frustratingly blank. 

'I am completing a deal I struck with Virfuril five months ago, Yennefer. In exchange for personally arranging a favourable end to the ongoing dispute about marriage arrangements with Lyria I would be given the loan of his mage and a letter of introduction.’

Tissaia pauses, glancing up at Yennefer. When she continues, her voice is pitched lower and her lips barely move.

‘We will be going south to Cintra under Virfirul’s name to meet with a contact of mine, and then finish another task particular to our talents with which I shall share the details at the appropriate time. We leave tomorrow. I suggest you bring warm clothing.'

Tissaia departs, disappearing through the crowd in the direction of the doorway. Yennefer is left standing at the edge of the dance floor, filled with anger, lingering arousal, and struggling with the overwhelming urge to run away from Aedirn forever.

A glance at the tables at the side of the room makes her curse.

The Redanian spymaster is gone.


	2. The Horse

_  
Dancing is a skill that must be mastered by every sorceress, and no exceptions are made for students, whatever their physical limitations might be._

_After fleeing from the scornful barbs of the dance tutor, who seemed to take particular pleasure in singling Yennefer out and cruelly listing every physical defect that made her completely unsuited to do the steps, Yennefer goes to the only person who she knows will teach her._

_Istredd instructs her in basic forms as best as he’s able, but the nuances are missing, as Rectoress de Vries had bluntly pointed out when she saw the end results of a miserable weekend of tripping after Istredd around the bottom level of Thanedd._

_'One…'_

_Lifting her heels up, she prepares to…_

_'...Two…Three.'_

_...step forwards one stride and spin outwards to face away from the partner that isn’t there._

_Tissaia is watching her from her desk, her elbows resting on the smooth top with fingers steepled together. Her eyes are narrowed. It’s late - the office window is shuttered and the light in the room comes from tall candles scattered about the room._

_‘One…Two, Three.’_

_Yennefer turns, her arms held up as if holding on to a partner’s body._

_'Measured steps, girl. This is a dance, not a race.’_

_Yennefer's cheeks grow hot with embarrassment at the unfortunate display she’s making of this part of the form. Distracted, she lurches into a forward stride, leaning a little too far over her knee and stumbles, knocking into a wall cabinet. The delicate devices sitting on the shelves rattle ominously._

_‘Yennefer, promise me that when you arrive at your first ball at court and the king asks you to dance, that you will not lead him around the floor like a mule on its way to market.’_

_Yennefer halts in the middle of office, her fists clenched tight, her back aching. It feels like learning magic all over again - blindly feeling her way around in the dark in a crowded room where everyone else can see._

_Tissaia stands and walks around her desk towards Yennefer. The woman’s steps are effortless, her shoulders back, spine straight._

_Yennefer yearns to possess even a part of her poise._

_‘Allow yourself to be lead-,’ she continues as she comes to a stop directly in front of Yennefer. ‘- and direct him in a way that he will assume is a decision of his own making.’_

_‘Let us start at the beginning.’_

_Tissaia, assuming the lead position, catches up Yennefer’s right hand in her left._

_Straightening up as much as she is physically able, Yennefer sets her other hand on Tissaia’s shoulder, her fingers brushing over the smooth surface of the sleeve until she’s in the right spot._

_‘Eyes up, girl. There is no reason to look down at your shoes.’_

_Chastened, Yennefer looks up, and meets Tissaia’s gaze. The woman’s expression is not unkind._

_‘Now. One…’_  
  
——

It’s a little after two in the morning when Yennefer is woken by incessant knocking on the door to her rooms. Blinking away the mix of memory and dream that happened so long ago, roughly returning to consciousness, she reorients herself.

And feels a renewed sense of dread settles neatly into place in the center of her chest.

Yennefer had fled the wedding celebrations immediately after learning of Virfuril exchanging her person and services for a fortnight to the one woman she could not possibly hide from. She’d grabbed a half-empty jug of cider on her way out and finished it by the time she’d reached her rooms.

The ache in her head has already begun to rise as the drink wanes, and the throbbing behind her eyes matches the sharp staccato of knuckles on wood beat for beat. 

Throwing back the covers with a muttered curse, she stalks towards the door in her nightgown and flings it open - ready to skin whoever has decided to wake her after a measly hour of sleep. 

From his startled facial expression, the servant is not expecting the door to be yanked open with so much force. He holds up a small letter in front of his body defensively, and vanishes down the hall at a fast walk as soon as Yennefer snatches it from his hand.

Breaking the plain waxed seal open with her thumb, she scans the single word written on it with blurry vision. 

_Stables._

Yennefer incinerates the note with a muttered curse, marches back into her rooms to her desk, and yanks open the first drawer to reveal a small assortment of glass phials. Pulling out the stopper of the smallest, she downs it. A rush of tingling warmth ripples under her skin as the magic nullifies the alcohol in seconds. Shaking her head, she moves grimly to the wardrobe to dress.

She’s not going to make the same mistake of encountering Tissaia without being in full possession of her wits.

Yennefer’s packing involves stuffing items for travelling harder than is strictly necessary into a pair of saddlebags, and rolling up an assortment of useful items in protective padding. She selects one of her warmer cloaks from her wardrobe, bundles more clothing into a roll that magically reduces in size and weight, and sets off towards the courtyard.

\-----

It is hours before daybreak and the castle’s courtyard is clear and cold. The distant hills to the northeast that border Dol Blathanna are crowned with thick clouds and the tinge of frost on the air tells that Aedirn will be treated to an early winter.

The stables are near deserted when she enters, the only person being a groom snoring against a pile of straw, an empty jar of ale next to his knees. Two of Virfuril's hunting hounds are curled up beside him. The nearest one - a smooth-coated deerhound - sits up on her haunches to peer at Yennefer as she enters the building. Obviously satisfied that she isn’t an unfamiliar intruder, the dog stretches out her front legs and lays down again with a soft whine.

The sound of hooves on stone makes Yennefer look over towards the darkness of the stalls. Tissaia is walking towards her, leading a pair of arch-necked Lyrian-bred horses: a blood-bay mare and a dappled grey gelding. 

The woman is dressed for travelling - in split riding skirts and a thick cloak trimmed in mink fur. Her large hood is thrown back over her shoulders, and her too-dark hair is tied up at the base of her neck.

It’s the first time Yennefer has seen Tissaia’s uncovered face in thirty years. She feels a surge of raw emotion forming a ball in her throat as her gaze drifts over the familiar curve of the woman’s delicate mouth, the expressive eyebrows, the clear-cut jaw. 

Yennefer can’t even begin to pick apart how she feels about the woman standing before her.

Tissaia hands the grey gelding’s reins to Yennefer without a word, and walks her own mare to the entrance of the stables, stopping just outside the doorway.

Yennefer begins to attach her belongings to the back of the saddle with leather ties, strapping the roll of clothing behind her cantle. She has to reach up to do so - the gelding stands a little over 16 hands at the withers, and is well-muscled, with good bone and a sloping shoulder. The Lyrians breed excellent horses and these two are no exception. 

He stretches his nose down and begins pawing at the ground, steel shoes scraping loudly on the floor. She hisses, and pulls his head up.

She can’t help watching out of the corner of her eye as Tissaia mounts her own bay mare from the ground, one foot high in the stirrup, jumping up to swing her leg over in a smooth movement that belies her height.

Adjusting the stirrups to the correct length and checking the girth, Yennefer mounts the grey and settles in the saddle, rearranging her cloak to cover her legs. The gelding clearly has energy to spare, impatiently side-passing in the direction of the mare, arching his neck downwards and mouthing at the bit, the metal clinking noisily. Yennefer shortens her reins until she is in contact with his mouth and squeezes the gelding into her hands to follow Tissaia towards the open gate at the opposite end of the courtyard. 

‘Where exactly are we headed?’ she asks as they cross the dividing bridge that separates the castle from the main streets and leads to the lower levels of the city. The guards watch from their posts by the towers on either side and nod as they pass.

‘Through the mountains in Mahakam above Rivia, and over the Yaruga,’ comes the quiet answer.

Yennefer pulls up abruptly. Her gelding tosses his head at the suddenness of the halt, stepping sideways in protest, hooves sliding on the cobblestones. 

_‘The Yaruga?,’_ she hisses. ‘Why the hell are we not going there directly with a portal? It’s a week's ride away!'

Tissaia’s face is expressionless, and her words are measured and almost too soft to hear. 

'For a number of reasons that will become more clear during our journey, Yennefer, but perhaps the most important being a necessity to avoid making noise, magical or otherwise.’

Yennefer's in danger of cracking her back teeth if she continues to clench her jaw any harder. Her tolerance for cryptic answers is poor on a good day, and this is decidedly not one of them.

And she is already cold.

They ride through the empty streets of Vengerberg at a walk, past the shuttered windows and closed doors of the narrow stone houses and shops. They are waved through the main gate by the guards after Yennefer pulls back the hood of her cloak. The soldiers are familiar with Virfuril’s mage, and aware that her duties for the king often take her out at odd times of the night.

After leaving the high stone walls of the city proper and moving into the outlying farms and settlements, Tissaia moves her horse up into a ground-covering trot. Yennefer’s gelding takes this opportunity to try to race into a canter to match the mare, and Yennefer forces him back to a trot, leaving a few horse lengths between the two of them. She’s no patience for a week’s ride on an unruly horse, and is aware that the gelding will eventually give up testing her. She’s quite certain she’s more stubborn than he is.

The horses carry them at a steady pace down the main road, past open fields of stacked hay and sleeping cattle. Small houses and barns are scattered every half-mile, the pens in front of each building filled with sheep and goats and pigs .

Yennefer had grown up on one of these farms, a lifetime ago. She’d dreamed of being wanted and needed and loved, and watched others gain the very things that she would never have, not as a bent-backed monstrosity whose own father resented her.

But that was before someone had pulled Yennefer away from all she knew and thrust her into a new and far more complicated world.

\----

They’re three miles away from the village where the route splits into two: the wider southern route to Lyria and the track west to the mountains that cover the upper reaches of Rivia. Dawn is approaching, bringing with it the soft morning light and the sweet sound of bird song from high in the trees that border the dirt road. 

Yennefer has ridden here before on the several of the king’s hunts - the surrounding forest had been planted by Virfuril’s grandfather King Demavend I for his future heirs to chase deer and boar. Demavend had been celebrating his victory over the elves in the northeast, invading their last refuge of Dol Blathanna and tearing up every last remnant of the people who had dwelled there for centuries. The valley where they had once lived now formed the most fertile soil in Aedirn, and was covered with crops and fields of wheat and barley. 

But Yennefer has not been paying much attention to the surrounding beauty of the forest - she’s spent the last hour watching Tissaia’s back with narrowed eyes. 

It hasn’t escaped her notice that the woman has been splinting her ribs with her hand since picking up the pace after Vengerberg. Tissaia’s expression is set into a grimace, and the relief on her face is visible whenever they slow back to a walk.

(And whatever the cause of her discomfort will have been recently too, since Tissaia had been perfectly well during the dance that Yennefer is doing her utmost to push out of her memory.)

She squeezes her horse up into a trot until she is side-to-side with Tissaia. The gelding takes this as an invitation to prance, and Tissaia’s mare pins her ears back and rolls her eyes in warning.

‘You are injured.’ 

‘I had an encounter with the Redanian envoy after leaving the banquet,’ Tissaia answers, her tone the same as if they are discussing the weather. ‘Words were exchanged, and he decided to stick a dagger into my ribs.’

Yennefer’s curiosity about what the head of Redanian Intelligence had gotten up to after she lost track of him the previous evening is answered.

‘You were stabbed,’ she says flatly.

‘Hence our early departure.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Clearly.’

Yennefer stares at her.

‘The Redanians will want answers about why their envoy was murdered at an ally’s wedding.’

Tissaia glances over at Yennefer. ‘I’ve found that the Redanians will simply replace a deceased spy with the next one, assuming that former was not suitable for the role if he was foolish enough to let himself be killed.' 

Yennefer’s ire grows. She had thought this day could not become any more complicated. ‘Virfuril will believe we had something to do with it.’

‘Virfuril is already aware of the man’s untimely demise, and will take care of the fallout.’ Tissaia‘s grimace turns into a frown, and she shifts in her saddle, adjusting the placement of her hand on her ribs. ‘The difficulty is finding the identity of the man’s successor. The Redanians have taken an uncomfortably close interest in me in recent years and I...’

Her voice trails off and her head whips around to look towards the southeast.

‘Tissaia?’

But Tissaia doesn’t reply. She’s stopped her mare in the middle of the road and is sitting completely still, staring off into the distance.

Instinctively, Yennefer reaches out with her mind, brushing against the other woman’s thoughts. It’s considered exceptionally rude among mages to enter another's mind uninvited but she’s past caring at this point.

All Yennefer earns for her curious probing is a sudden sharp sting in her head that makes her wince and reflexively clasp a hand to her temple. Tissaia’s mind is firmly sealed shut - Yennefer wouldn’t be able to break through the barrier even if she caught the woman unawares

‘A ripple, if you must know.’ 

Tissaia’s irritation is clear - she’s turned back around to stare icily at Yennefer, her lips thinner than ever, her blue eyes flashing. Yennefer’s attempted intrusion has obviously not gone unnoticed. ‘A girl has just had her first conduit moment.’

The ache in her head has begun to subside, but Yennefer’s temper has returned in full force.

‘Another eel to power Aretuza’s opulence.’ 

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Safe from that fate only if she is able to follow the directions of her betters and toss away any semblance of self or her own desires,’ Yennefer says waspishly. ‘Tell me, Rectoress, do you always know which girls will Ascend?’

'Not always.’

'Did you ever think I would fail?'

(It’s childish of her to ask, she knows, but deep down inside Yennefer wants to be told that she had defied Tissaia’s expectations and proved her wrong about the crooked-spined cripple she had plucked out of a pig pen.)

’Not once.' 

Tissaia this with such conviction that Yennefer is temporarily struck speechless and is left staring back at her in shock. 

Yennefer can’t meet Tissaia’s unwavering gaze for more than a few seconds and looks for the first distraction she can think of - reaching for her water skin strapped to the cantle of her saddle. The woman has urged her horse back into a walk by the time Yennefer is finished drinking. 

She moves her grey into a faster pace to close the distance between them again.

'And who will collect the girl? Will you be dragging me all the way across the Alba and beyond the borders of Nilfgaard?’

'Rectoress Laux-Antille will bring her back to Aretuza.'

Yennefer vaguely recalls the beautiful blonde mage from a meeting a decade earlier at some royal function or another - accompanying King Foltest. Margarita, perhaps? Gentle and approachable and lushly proportioned - the complete opposite of Tissaia’s cool restraint. Virfuril had been enchanted with her, and Yennefer had watched as the mage gracefully declined his offer in a manner that had somehow not brought any resentment from the king.

'She has your chain, I take it?'

Yennefer has never seen her without the silver crest before now, and Tissaia’s conspicuously bare neck has not gone unnoticed. The only jewelry the woman is wearing are the pair of emerald earrings from the previous evening.

‘It was a feature that made me too recognizable and painted a target on my back. I had to make alterations to my appearance to avoid interest while I was dealing with matters in Lyria.’

Yennefer opens her mouth to ask more questions but sees that they’ve arrived at a wooden bridge. 

It’s two cart-widths wide, crossing one of the rivers draining into the valleys of Aedirn. Their horses move with purpose towards the edge of the bridge to look at water below, hanging their heads down and snorting, obviously thirsty. It’s too steep to reach the water, but Yennefer knows that there is a path that goes northwards along the river to where the bank eases to a gentler slope, and nudges her gelding’s sides to encourage him down into the trees.

After riding for five minutes upstream, they find a safe place to walk down the clay bank, and Yennefer’s horse eagerly wades into the water, dropping his head to drink. The rising sun is beginning to cast beams of light through the tree canopy overhead, and the water glows bright around her.

There is a sudden splash up ahead and Yennefer’s gelding shies sideways with a squeal, rearing up on his hind legs. Yennefer grabs a fistful of his long mane but keeps her seat.

When she sees why the horse spooked, she throws her arm up, casting a shield in front of them both without pausing for a breath.

Elves standing in the water near the bend in the river, looking in their direction. Four of them carrying curved bows made of sinew and wood, quivers at their hips. The fifth is young - a girl of no more than eight or so years - dressed in a short tunic and a skirt made from piece of deer hide.

The child’s mouth is stained with berry juice. She has a doll made out of twisted grass clutched tightly to her chest. 

They all look very thin.

_‘Síocháin. Ni chiallaíonn muid aon dochar.’_

Tissaia’s smooth voice rises behind her, her speech unhurried, the lilting speech of Hen Llinge flowing easily from her lips. She’s stopped her mare near the center of the river, her hood pushed back to show her face, sitting tall in the saddle.

The tallest of the elves straightens slowly. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, she takes a careful look over the two mages. Her voice is rough as she responds.

_‘Táimid ag dul, cailleach.’_

Tissaia nods once. She holds up one of her hands, her palm facing outwards.

_‘Taisteal sábháilte.’_

The elves meld into the vegetation on the opposite bank, leaving only ripples in the water in their wake.

Then there is only bird song.

Yennefer allows the shield she’d cast to drop.

‘Fools.’ She says, shaking her head. ‘They’re too far West. They’ve been warned to stay in the Blue Mountains.’

Tissaia has loosened her reins so that her mare may drink. She sits back in her saddle, gazing over at Yennefer. 

‘What use is a barren wasteland to starving hunters? They have run out of things to eat - and with a child to feed they will be desperate enough to risk it.’

‘Too proud to dig in the dirt like humans and other lesser beings.’ Yennefer scoffs. 'So concerned with their sense of self-worth and lines of lineage that they'd rather starve.'

‘No sympathy for your own kin, Yennefer?’

Yennefer bristles.

'Forgive me if my elvish blood is a sore point, Rectoress,’ she spits out. ‘It’s caused me nothing but misery and pain.'

‘And is likely responsible in no small part for your abilities in magic. But you would not be the first in this world to refuse to acknowledge your heritage.’

‘My mother would not speak of my true father. It only meant another blow to my face if I ever brought it up.’

Something dark flashes across Tissaia’s expression for the briefest of seconds, but is gone so fast that Yennefer wonders if she has imagined it. 

The gelding has finally settled enough to drink, almost chest deep in water. Yennefer is ready to move him back to shore at the first sign of a roll.

‘You seem to care more for the elves than most I’ve met in this world, Rectoress. Why the sentiment?’

Tissaia regards Yennefer carefully, and it is some time before she speaks.

‘I spent time in Dol Blathanna with the Aen Seidhe, many years ago,’ she finally says. ‘And I was unable to help them in their time of need a century later.’

Picking up her reins again, she moves her mare out of the river and back to the path that leads to the bridge. 

‘What is in Mahakam?’ Yennefer asks when they’re halfway back to the road. The path is wide enough to ride abreast here, and the horses have settled into an easy walk.

‘A item necessary for the third and final part of our journey. It took me a great deal of effort to discover its existence, and I know of someone who can find the exact location.’

‘And after that?’

‘We ride across the Yaruga towards Cintra to complete the other pair of tasks. You may return to Aedirn afterwards if you wish.’

Yennefer’s eyes narrow. 

‘You make it sound as though my return to Aedirn is optional.’

‘That is up to you.’ Tissaia looks over at Yennefer, her eyes calculating. A piece of her dark hair has come out of the coil at her neck. ‘Surely you have noticed the distance that is growing between yourself and Virfuril?’

Yennefer stares back at her, silent.

‘Heed this warning, Yennefer, if nothing else. Virfuril has no legitimate sons. Should his newest wife produce a girl, he will certainly kill the babe and her mother, and likely you as well. The man feels his mortality more keenly with each passing year and he is close enough to madness in his pursuit of an heir. And he will assume that if his present mage cannot give him a son, then the Brotherhood will replace you with a new mage who might be able to grant his wish.’

‘Since when have you ever given a thought to my safety, Rectoress?’ Yennefer says scornfully. 

She regrets this instantly, feeling how false the words sound as soon as they pass her lips.

Tissaia does not grace this with an reply.

\---

The first night is spent at a roadside inn thirty miles southwest of Vengerberg. Even Yennefer's spirited gelding is subdued - his antics had lessened as the day wore on. 

Tissaia goes directly to her room once the innkeeper's wife gives them their keys, only pausing long enough to warn Yennefer that they will be leaving very early in the morning.

Yennefer eats by herself. The inn’s common room is crowded, with independent traders drinking and playing cards, a well-dressed merchant with his hired guards taking up one large table, and a few travelers eating their evening meals. A boy is sitting near the fireplace plucking out a tune on a small harp.

Finishing her meal, ignoring the looks of clear interest from the other patrons, Yennefer returns to her room. She undresses and bathes herself in the small tub in the corner, heating up the water with a few words. After washing away the dust from the road with a cloth, she soaks her tired muscles, her body aching after ten hours in the saddle.

Drying herself and getting into bed, she lays on her back, staring up at the dark ceiling, unable to quiet her mind. 

Tissaia had been right - Virfuril has changed. There are more secrets between them since the last queen’s death and he has withdrawn from her council more often than not in recent months. It has been at the periphery of her mind for some time now, and to have it said plainly to her face makes it all the more difficult to ignore.

The music from downstairs trickles up through the floorboards, along with the sound of laughter and conversation. Somewhere outside her window a dog is barking.

Yennefer thinks back to the melancholy tune that she had danced to only a day earlier with the woman sleeping across the hallway. 

The sensation of soft breath at her neck, the warmth felt through the other woman’s dress where she'd held her waist. Weaving through the crowd of people, moving in time to the music, orbiting each other.

Her mind drifts back to the river that morning. She recalls the clear colour of Tissaia’s eyes in the soft light of the dawn, and of the shape of her mouth as she spoke, the tilt of her narrow lips. 

Of the woman’s sadness after she had seen the elves.

Yennefer turns onto her side, tugging the quilt over her shoulders, refusing to give in to the urge to relieve the need between her legs.

\----

Tissaia reappears the next morning with her bound hair returned to the natural brown, cleaned of the dark dye that had coloured it. 

Yennefer imagines the woman washing it out during the previous evening, stripping it with some concoction or another. She tries not to dwell too much on the thought of Tissaia bathing as she can’t discount the possibility that the woman will sense the increase in her heart rate.

Tissaia isn’t clutching at her side any more, at least.

They eat and set out before daybreak, travelling in silence for the first fifteen miles, alternating between walking and moving at a faster pace once the horses have rested for a time.

The grey gelding throws a shoe three hours into their day. Yennefer dismounts and walks, not willing to risk the chance of a stone bruise. Animals are always more difficult to heal with magic and the only available horses to replace a lame mount in these parts will be shaggy, short-necked mountain ponies favoured by the villagers. 

Neither of them suggest doubling up on the mare.

It is mid-morning by the time they reach the next village on the lightly-treed hills of the Aedirnian border. There are twenty or so wood houses with thatched roofs - serving as one of the settlements for the local mining operations of coal and base metals.

One of the buildings belongs to a blacksmith. Replacing a horseshoe is a simple matter, and the man starts on the gelding immediately, one of his young sons holding the horse’s bridle.

Tissaia speaks in quiet tones to the blacksmith’s wife, giving her coin to go purchase food for their journey through the mountains. 

Yennefer leans back against a fence post outside of the smithy and watches the road, glaring back at the villagers who stare at her. She’s footsore from an hour of walking, and it’s made her freshly irritable. 

‘And just where are you planning to find this mysterious object of yours?’ she asks when Tissaia moves back to her.

Tissaia inclines her head towards the village and Yennefer reluctantly picks up step beside her. 

They make their way through the woods towards one of the smaller huts set away from the main village. The building’s thatched roof is sorely in need of fresh straw but the carefully-weeded herb garden on the sunny side of the building is well-tended. Yennefer frowns when she sees foxgloves and hemlock among the plants growing there.

An elderly woman is standing outside a pen of woven willow branches, attached to the side of the hut. Her grey hair is braided, and she is dressed in a simple kirtle of brown wool. She’s working at a rough table, slicing up a chicken carcass with practiced cuts of a cleaver.

They approach, unnoticed. A rooster in the pen crows loudly.

Yennefer watches as the woman pulls out the liver from the carcass and holds it up to her face, squinting.

‘Close enough, now,’ the woman is muttering to herself. ‘But it is not the time yet.’

‘I require information,’ Tissaia says, taking the final few steps towards the table, her voice low but clear. Yennefer hangs back, arms crossed, watching in silence. 

The woman gives a start, dropping her cleaver on the table with a metallic clang. Glancing over at them with cloudy eyes, her pupils near opaque, she clutches the liver in her fist.

‘Forgive me, gentlewomen,’ she says in a thin voice. ‘I did not notice you. My vision is poor.’

‘But your sight is undiminished, Haruspex, as you and I well know.’ 

The woman’s posture changes and her face relaxes into a grin. She’s missing most of her teeth, and the ones remaining are yellowed. 

‘Ah, so you’ll be wanting an answer to a riddle that vexes you, then. Have you brought an offering?’

Tissaia drops a small bag on the wooden table. The coins inside clink as they land. 

‘Tell me where I may find the forgotten place in the mountains, slipped out of memory of all who now dwell in this world, hidden from the eyes of men.’

The woman snorts, and picks up the leather pouch, judging its heft. She squints at them again, rolls up the sleeves of her woolen smock, then hobbles over the short distance to the pen beside her hut.

Pausing to look down at the flock, she grabs the rooster over the side of the fence, snatching it up by the neck from over the wooden panel. Ignoring the furiously flapping wings and angry clucking, she drags the bird onto the table and kills it with a single blow to the head. 

Moments later, she has a still-beating heart held in her blood-stained fingers. Another slice, and the inner walls and delicate chambers are exposed, the twitching tissue shiny and wet. 

The woman traces the flow of blood with her fingernail and then looks back up at them, eyes narrowed.

‘Beyond the rivers and meadows, where the sun does not show after noon-day, at the sister peak to the Prince’s Folly. Find what you seek below the cliffs there, near the grove of aspens.’

Yennefer blinks, unable to conceal her surprise, but Tissaia takes this information without expression. 

A skinny arm shoots out and clutches at Tissaia’s sleeve as she turns away. Half-blind, she misses by inches, but Tissaia turns back to look at her.

'The bitterness of the one who follows you - it will eat her up if she’s not careful.’

The old woman is looking directly at Yennefer.

‘I don’t need a bird to tell me that.' Tissaia replies.

\----

The path leading to the Mahakam mountain range is narrow and winding, barely wide enough to allow a cart to pass. It’s windy, and cool despite the afternoon sun, and the trees wave in the breeze around them.

After several hours of riding up and down the ridges, gradually gaining elevation, they come to a place where an old rockfall has covered the road. Tracks in the dirt show that previous travelers have gone around the barrier on the down-sloping side. 

Yennefer moves her gelding off her leg, urging him to walk into the bushes and around the rocks. He bends his head down and willingly steps over the stones to the new path. 

The horse is growing on her, oddly enough, and has settled with two days of firm direction.

She hasn’t gone more than a short way down the bank of the detour when four men suddenly appear out of the surrounding boulders. They’re holding up short swords and cudgels, and move quickly to grab at the horses’ bridles from either side. Behind her, Tissaia is very still, and has made no movement to defend herself. 

‘Welcome to the beautiful hills of Mahakam, my gentle ladies.’

The man who has caught hold of the gelding’s bridle is Rivian by his accent. A wool cap covers his bald head, and he is dressed in worn clothing that has clearly seen better days. A short sword is tucked into his wide leather belt. 

‘Now then,’ he says with an easy grin. ‘I see you haven’t paid the toll for crossing our well-maintained road.’

‘A toll?’ Yennefer’s answering smile is chilling. ‘You would do well to let us go on our way and forget you ever saw us.’

‘Now why would we want to part company so soon, love?’

‘Fine horses, Lachlan - they’ll fetch a pretty price won’t they?’ 

Another man has appeared on the rocks above them. He’s holding a short bow and has an arrow nocked and drawn, aimed directly at Yennefer’s chest. 

‘Now, now, we’re not greedy folk, men,’ the man called Laclan says. ‘Hand over everything you’re carrying, including those pretty gems on your ears, and we’ll talk about the fee for your departure, which could potentially include your mounts.’ 

The largest of the men has caught hold of Tissaia’s metal stirrup.

‘If the beautiful lady would kindly get off her horse,’ he says, grinning up at her with a gap-toothed smile, ‘I’d happily show her a thing or two about being mounted.’

And then three things happen in quick succession.

The gap-toothed man grabs Tissaia’s knee with the clear intent to pull her out of the saddle.

Tissaia punches upwards with the hidden dagger she has in her hand, catching him in the throat just above the collar of his leather jerkin. He gurgles, clutching at his ruined neck, hot blood spurting between his grasping fingers.

An arrow bounces off of Yennefer’s shielding spell and spins off into the trees behind her.

‘Magic! They’ve got magic!’

The yell is cut off as Yennefer reaches out with her gloved hand and snaps it into a clenched fist in the direction of the man above them. 

The next arrow halfway drawn, he is dead before he hits the ground, the base of his brain crushed inside his skull.

A second spell of force, thrusting out with both her arms, and the men on either side of Yennefer fall to the earth, their spines snapped at the first vertebrae. Unable to breathe or move, eyes staring, they’ll be unconscious in a minute and dead in three.

Yennefer glances over her shoulder towards Tissaia, another spell ready on her lips, gathering energy for its release. 

It’s unnecessary - the man who had caught hold of her mare’s bridle is being trampled under flailing hooves, a dagger through his eye.

The dust settles.

Five dead men lie on the ground at their feet.

Yennefer dismounts, pulling her snorting gelding towards the first man Tissaia killed. She bends down picks up one of the swords and holds it up, examining the blade. It’s short, but balanced, with no nicks to the blade. A little more searching of the bodies show no more than a handful of copper and silver in their purses.

‘Bandits, not assassins.’ she says, frowning. ‘The Rivians are living up to their reputation.’

Tissaia has dismounted and retrieved her dagger. She cleans the blade on the grass, and stands back up, looking above them beyond the cliffs.

‘We’ll leave the path from here and take the woods,’ she says, nodding up the slope that cuts between two neighboring peaks, the valley covered with trees. 

Shaking her head, Yennefer removes the leather scabbard matching her chosen sword from one of the dead men, tying it to her saddle so she can draw it easily.

\----

Three hours pass as they beat their way through a narrow ravine and up the side of a ridge. Tissaia’s mare stumbles over a rock in one of the steeper sections and nearly goes down. They dismount and lead the horses on foot after that.

Tissaia is walking with clear intent towards a specific direction, but Yennefer is too tired to ask how she knows where they are to go. 

After pushing her way through a particularly thick set of brush and closely-growing trees in pursuit of the woman, dragging her gelding behind her, Yennefer looks up.

She blinks. 

The meadow she finds herself in is only thirty paces wide, and would be easy to miss even if someone was searching for it; surrounded by thick brush and fallen rocks. A jumble of worn stones that might once have been a statue lies in the center of the space. A natural spring comes out of the same ground and trickles across the wild grass, disappearing down the slope below. There are blooming wildflowers growing everywhere, though the late afternoon sun is behind the mountain and there is only shade in the clearing now.

Tissaia leads her horse across the space towards the cliff on the opposite side, the rough face of dark basalt towering another several hundred feet above them. Tethering her horse to a tree, she vanishes between the smooth trunks of two aspens.

Yennefer follows her across the meadow.

‘Tissaia?’

‘Here,’ comes the answering call.

It’s a cave. The opening is overgrown, the boughs of the trees hanging across like a curtain, the yellow leaves trembling in the wind. She can hear the slow drip of water deeper in the cavern.

Frowning, Yennefer ties her gelding beside Tissaia’s mare and pushes her way past the branches and into the cooler space.

The cave ceiling has partially collapsed and Yennefer has to duck to avoid brushing her head against the rough stone. Straightening up when she is fully inside, she finds the other woman standing nearby, lighting a makeshift torch made from dried grass tightly bound into a roll. When it is burning well, Tissaia lifts the torch up in front of her.

The space is relatively small, only about twelve or so paces across at the longest edge, with smooth high walls that stretch twenty feet up. It could only have been made through magical creation - so unlike the rest of the mountain they’ve been climbing up.

The first thing that draws Yennefer’s attention is on the wall furthest away from them. Yennefer’s eyes widen, and she moves towards it, summoning a glowing ball of light into her hand so as to better see. 

‘A gateway. How did you know it would be here?'

The portal is triangular - more than the height of a tall man, and of equal width at the base. It is made of marble - so unlike the surrounding dark grey basalt of the rest of the cave. It is also half buried in fallen rock, cracked and shattered fragments littering the ground around it. 

At the crest is a keystone made from the same white marble, adorned with a single etched rune on it. 

‘Books salvaged from Dol Blathanna many decades ago. I doubt the elves even know of its existence - the location was vague.’

Tissaia hands off the torch to Yennefer and removes her gloves. She reaches up to trace the chiseled marks on the white rock with her bare fingers. More runes run down either side of the outline on the wall.

Even Yennefer is impressed. She’s heard of these places, or rather, read about them. Hidden deep in valleys, high on distant mountaintops, inset in the rock of desert caverns and cold cliffs of the coastal islands. Forgotten relics of a not-so-distant past, created by elven mages millennia ago, even before the arrival of the humans to the Continent. 

The only other one she has seen was in Tor Lara, on the highest floor of the tower, too unstable to use. Students were warned about a curious researcher who had disappeared into the portal and never returned. It wasn’t even safe to cast spells within the chamber that housed the device due to fluctuations it caused in natural magic.

Tissaia is frowning.

'It is as I suspected: The magic has left this doorway and the way is shut forever. The only power left here is in the potential of this stone.’

Yennefer watches as the woman climbs on top of a waist-high piece of fallen rock, pulling out her dagger. Tissaia slips the blade into the narrow gap between the wedge-shaped keystone and the block beside it and begins to pry sideways.

There is a dry shifting of rock, and then the rune fragment is in her hand. 

——

They sleep at the opening of the cave. It is late, and too dark to safely descend the narrow track back down to the road. The horses doze near the entrance, hobbled on the front but free to graze, heads hanging low as they rest. 

With the dark comes the slow downward creep in temperature.

Yennefer is already cold when she goes to bed near the fire. She lies on her side in silence, her bedroll not thick enough to prevent her what remains of her body warmth from leeching into the dark rock below her. She’s too tired to safely use a spell to warm herself - it’s been two nights with very little sleep now, and the exertion from the fight that afternoon had left her drowsy.

When Yennefer finally does drift off, still shivering, her sleep is deep and dreamless.

She wakes after a time to the sound of a piece of wood cracking in the fire with a sharp pop. Her body is now comfortably warm, and a familiar scent fills her nostrils. Blinking her eyes open, she finds a heavy cloak that is not her own covering her body up to her neck - the dense mink fur and thick outer lining providing protection from the early morning chill. 

It is obvious that it had been draped over her body intentionally. 

‘There is food here.’

Tissaia is sitting near the small fire at the mouth of the cave, her back to Yennefer. She shows no sign of being cold, even with her breath visible in the freezing air. When Yennefer stands up and approaches, she sees that the mist is actually smoke from a pipe held between Tissaia’s fingers.

(Catmint leaves and orange sunbrush, if Yennefer can trust her sense of smell. For centering the mind and soothing pains.)

The food is meslin bread and farmer’s cheese, with golden harvest apples, ripe hazelnuts, and dried sweet figs. Yennefer eats slowly, watching the glowing coals, lost in her thoughts. 

Tissaia reaches out to place another branch on the fire, and her stilted movement on the extension of her arm is obvious.

She has not healed. Curious.

A stray thought strikes Yennefer and her mind connects the pieces. The injury. The encounter with the bandits where Tissaia had used her dagger. The orange sunbrush for pain.

‘Why are you not using magic to heal yourself?’

There’s a moment of silence.

‘Necessity.' Tissaia answers, her voice crisp. ‘Our final task after we visit Cintra will tax even my stores, and I cannot afford to waste even a single drop of power before that time. 

She moves her pipe to her left hand and uses her right to push the branch further into the fire. 

‘It is why I offered to negotiate the marriage arrangement between Aedirn and Lyria. A convenient cover to safely collect my energy which I could not have done in the position of Rectoress and as a very visible member of the Council.’

‘How long since you last cast a spell?’

‘Ten months for external magics. I kept my mind shield in place - which you insist on testing every chance you get - and hold onto the awareness for innate magic that covers the Continent - although that is mostly what Margarita has linked to me through these earrings.’

She indicates one of the green jewels hanging from her ears.

‘Does the Chapter know?’

Tissaia grimaces. ‘It would be foolish to expose myself as having a moment of vulnerability after expending my power at a certain point. The number of mages I trust can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare, and I certainly didn’t trust Stregabor’s ambitions.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Yennefer asks impatiently. ‘If you knew you couldn’t use your magic, then why did you not ask me to heal your wound yesterday?’ 

A level look is the only answer she gets in return. The narrow stem of the pipe returns to Tissaia’s lips, and she lets out another breath of smoke.

Oh.

Yennefer comes to a sudden realization.

It is blindingly obvious why Tissaia hadn’t asked her for help in the first place: she hadn’t expected Yennefer to give it. 

The fire in front of them crackles, the glowing warmth reaching into her bones. 

For the first time in a very long while, Yennefer feels ashamed.

A lark calls somewhere deep in the woods. Yennefer lifts her head to stare up at the heavens through the opening of the cave entrance. The night is clear, and it is still very early - hours yet until sunrise. Stars glitter across the blue-black sky, the moon now on the other side of the mountain. The wind brushes against the aspen trees - shaking yellowing leaves into a gentle flutter.

Making her decision, Yennefer stands up and walks over to where her saddlebags are resting next to her bedding. Fishing out a linen-wrapped parcel and her waterskin, she returns to the fire and moves to where Tissaia is sitting, kneeling beside her.

'Let me clean this before I close it,’ she says, nodding towards Tissaia’s injured ribs.

Tissaia does not say anything for a long moment, searching Yennefer’s face intently, her eyes dark even in the light of the fire. 

She finally gives a small nod, turning around so that her injured side is revealed, drawing back the edge of the tunic that she was wearing below her dress.

Yennefer begins to peel back the dressing underneath with careful fingers, unwrapping the long cloth bandage that binds around the woman’s torso. 

Her lips thin when she sees what is underneath the linens.

The slash along Tissaia’s ribs is approximately the length of Yennefer’s hand. It cuts deepest into the tissue of the outside of her left breast, growing more superficial as it moves towards her side. It was obviously intended as a killing blow and Tissaia must have twisted out of the strike before the dagger could penetrate too deeply. As it is, the cut is days away from closing and weeks away from being fully healed.

Tissaia does not flinch as the wound is washed with clean water. The only sound she makes is a hiss through her teeth when Yennefer lays her hands over either side of the opening - long fingers cool against her flesh, followed by slow warmth that seeps below the skin.

The woman is the first to speak after a while. Yennefer is only half listening, deep in the healing trance as she encourages tissue to close and flesh to grow. She knows that this effort of this will certainly send her back to sleep.

'You had asked about portals while we were leaving the castle, Yennefer,’ Tissaia begins quietly. ‘Portals are easy to track when you know what to look for, and even the elf-spelled portals cast using _feainnewedd_ are not as untraceable as we might think. They fold the two spaces together, crossing magical planes even if the points share the same world, and I suspect that they leave traces of the passage behind that can be used to link the user.'

'Other worlds?'

'The other spheres.'

Yennefer follows Tissaia’s nod towards the wall opposite the archway.

A large carving is cut into the stone in deep lines from the cave’s floor to the ceiling. It depicts a ship with triangular sails on two masts, fifty or so tall armored figures on its deck, armed with long spears and swords. Two overlapping circles cutting across the bow, plainly signifying a passage across a barrier.

Travelling from one sphere to another. And not only at the time of Conjunction. 

‘Before Conjunction, it is said that the elves were able to travel freely between worlds, without any significant effort. The chaos left behind in the wake of the merging disrupted the magics the elves were accustomed to, and made it impossible for all but the most powerful to cross as they had done before.’

‘And so the Aen Seidh were stuck in a world where they were quickly outnumbered, with magic that was disrupted and unfamiliar. And it was too late - the humans multiplied quickly and rose up and took the land.’

Yennefer listens quietly. She had read enough about the elves many years before, in the libraries at Aretuza, but had never taken much of an interest in their history, and the Aedirnian library held precious little on the subject.

‘And the travelers?’ she asks.

‘The Aen Elle. The Alder Folk, more powerful in magic than their kin, and all the more dangerous for it. For centuries scholars and sages debated about whether they came from across the seas or through a portal from another world but all agreed that the Aen Elle were drawn to magic like moths to a lit candle. The Nordlings named them The Wild Hunt and claimed the coming of their world-crossing ship would be heralded by a deep freeze and that they would bring death and destruction on any who stood in their path. 

‘Why tell me this?’

Tissaia regards her quietly.

‘Call it a premonition,’ she says. ‘I have lived long enough in this world to have seen stranger things than I ever thought possible. And I fervently hope that it never becomes necessary to yourself to expand your knowledge on the Aen Elle, or to witness the horrors they might bring to this world if given the opportunity.’

Yennefer lifts her hands away from Tissaia’s warm skin. The wound is sealed, and a very thin scar crossing four of her ribs is all that remains. 

‘Sleep some more.' Tissaia rests a cool hand on Yennefer's bare wrist, fingers brushing up against a rough ridge of tissue there. 'I’ll wake you when it is time to leave.’

And minutes later, Yennefer is fast asleep beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No birds were harmed in the making of this chapter. The author may have pulled out a little of her own hair after reading through histories of the three conflicting versions of the Witcher universes (book/game/television).


	3. The Spy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle readers - please note that this story will now be four chapters instead of the anticipated three. This chapter is also over 8000 words, so enjoy.

It takes three more days for Tissaia and Yennefer to make their way through the isolated passes of the steep-sloped mountains of Mahakam. The weather is cool and the skies remain cloudless. The only living creatures they see are mountain goats in the distance - and they meet no other travelers on this route - the rough track much too narrow for any cart. 

The time mostly passes in silence. 

Yennefer takes the lead on the winding switchbacks up hills and across cold streams, following the faint path towards Temeria. She is lost in her own introspective musings - centered around Tissaia’s unwillingness to ask her for help when she’d been injured, riding for two days with a slice carved into her torso.

She can’t stop her mind from returning to the memory of Tissaia’s slender form by the glowing coals of the fire in the cave. (Pale skin exposed, the injured flesh warm under Yennefer’s cool hands, the stretch of muscle along her ribs as the woman leaned forward.)

Behind her, Tissaia rides on a loose rein, her mare following along after Yennefer’s gelding without complaint. 

Tissaia rises before dawn each morning, and her dark hair is always combed and in a freshly coiled braid at her neck when Yennefer wakes. The sorceress cannot be sleeping well, but Yennefer doesn't press her for a reason - why give the woman the satisfaction of refusing to discuss it?

Tissaia has been spending every waking hour absorbed in careful examination of the keystone she’d pried out of the portal gate, holding it between her gloved hands, turning the piece over and over. She isn't using any magic that Yennefer can detect, which perplexes her all the more.

‘It is a channel,’ Tissaia says when Yennefer finally asks about it one evening after watching the woman ignore her meal of spiced lentil stew in favour of the wedge of white marble in her hands. ‘It amplifies whatever magic is put into it, provided one knows the sequence to unlock it.’

‘And using your magic wouldn’t help?’ Yennefer asks with raised eyebrows, her tone doubtful. They have set up camp for the evening on a level piece of ground near a river that cascades down a rocky slope nearby. The horses hunt for bits of grass at the water’s edge.

‘No.’ The woman shakes her head. ‘I am feeling out which threads to pull, and the challenge is sorting those from thousands of others.’ 

Tissaia exhales, straightening her spine and turning her neck to the left with a grimace, relieving some minor ache that has settled there. She traces the rune one last time before setting the stone down on her lap and picking up the bowl of food. 

‘Even if I was willing to, I am not certain that using magic would help me unravel the tangle of source that lies within the stone any faster.’

\---

The narrow rocky path descends down into an open forest of beech and oak trees to join the main road south and they spend two full days riding through the autumn-coloured woods of Southern Temeria to the ferry crossing to Kagen. The wide forest roads are mostly deserted, and the only people they encounter are farmers with carts and a pair of dwarves walking north towards Carrera with a mule, the wicker panniers strapped to the animal’s sides smelling strongly of smoked fish.

There are no inns along this route, so the women make camp in the woods, a good distance away from the path where their fire won’t be seen. Each night Yennefer places simple wards to guard them from unwanted visitors - animal or otherwise - and their sleep is uninterrupted. One evening they see a wolf watching the horses before moving through the trees in the other direction, seeking easier prey.

The trees gradually change into a mix of alder and willow as they move closer to the Yaruga, and soon the terrain opens up into the shallow marshlands of the lowlands. The river delta drains the northern valleys of Rivia and Lyria and Aedirn into a single deep channel almost two miles across at its widest point. On the opposite bank is the kingdom of Sodden, and the only passable way across the water with horses is a chain barge that ferries small cargo from one side of the river to the other. The next crossing before the ocean is almost 50 miles downriver at Sodden Hill bridge, spanning the cliffs that line the deep river canyon.

It is mid-morning when they arrive at the river crossing. A loud argument is in full swing between the two of the bargemen and the driver of an ox cart loaded with barrels, settled only when more coins are grudgingly handed over by the carter.

A little more than an hour later, the barge has returned from the opposite shore with a herder, his dog, and a large flock of long-fleeced sheep. After the sheep have been moved off the barge and payment is settled, the horses are loaded one at a time. 

The mare steps onto the wooden deck of the barge without pause. Yennefer’s gelding hesitates on the shore, skitters sideways, rolling his eyes so that the whites show, and then jumps over the makeshift gangway crossing onto the barge with the clatter of metal-shod hooves as he lands, causing the man coiling rope at the stern to swear as he narrowly avoids tumbling into the water. The horse settles only after Yennefer takes his bridle. 

The barge is released from the mooring by one of the men as the other two start moving the thick metal chain spanning the section of channel with a winch. With the creaking of metal and wood, the shallow-sided barge is drawn slowly across the shallows to the next attachment point out of four sections. 

A faint mist hovers above the surface of the water and soon the bank is obscured from view. The crossing stretches more than a mile wide, and the barge must be hooked into each new chain section tethered to the huge wood posts that have been driven into the river bottom.

Halfway across the water splits to form small islands of sediment caught up on pieces of driftwood and whole tree trunks, brought down by centuries of spring floods. Rushes and weeds have grown in these protected eddies and small brown birds - skylarks - flutter between each island hunting insects, the faint sound of their songs left in their passing.

A splash a hundred feet off the upstream side of the barge catches Yennefer’s attention, and she watches as a man-sized shape disappears under the water.

One of the men follows her gaze and grins unpleasantly when he sees the ripples.

‘Someone tried to swim it last month - didn’t like the price we quoted. We fished what was left of ‘em out several days later - not a pretty sight. Drowners and worse here - always up for an easy snack.’

A glance over at Tissaia shows the woman looking off into the mist in the direction of Kagen, hands clasped in front of her. Her lips are thinned, and a small crease is visible between her eyebrows.

Yennefer’s in no mood for a headache, and doesn’t try to push through to see what could be bothering Tissaia to the point of visible worry. Instead she turns back around and watches the songbirds fly over the shallows.

\---

The landing on the south side of the river is muddy, with the deep ruts of wagon wheels carved into the ground. The town of Kagen sits less than a mile away, and they are soon riding through the wooden gates that mark the entrance. 

Yennefer only spots two guards wearing old armour - members of the kingdom’s neglected army. It’s been some time since she took any interest in Sodden - a minor trading partner of Aedirn at best, but she vaguely remembers that Sodden’s military is made up of an assorted militia of sheep herders and farmers. It’s clear it would not take much effort for another country to successfully invade, given how sparse Sodden’s defenses are.

The town’s morning market is directly behind the entrance, with two dozen or so vendors selling their wares from wooden stalls and out of the backs of wagons, a cacophony of shouts and bleating of sheep and the sounds of moving people. Food sellers call out prices as people pass, selling squash and cabbages. At the closest stall two women are haggling over the price of crayfish rustling in a straw basket.

Pens of sheep are arranged beyond them, filled with lambs from the surrounding farms. Tissaia rides to the left of the wood pens, towards the tallest set of houses near the river-side of the town. A horse trader is showing a year-old draft colt to a farmer, several other horses tethered to a picket line by their halters. 

A name catches Yennefer’s ear as she passes by the horses, her gelding chewing on the bit and prancing at the sound of a stallion’s challenging snort, and she looks to her right as she settles him. A small crowd of townsfolk have gathered near the center of the town square where a hand puppet show is performing out of a cloth-covered booth.

Yennefer watches as a puppet with dark yarn for hair waves a wooden sword at the crowd on the makeshift stage.

‘The Redanian crown is mine by right ! We’ll not retreat without a fight!’

The crowd erupts into booing in response to the high-pitched voice. Even after all this time, Falka’s rebellion has stuck firmly in the minds of the North, even in places as far away as Sodden. The last glimpse Yennefer has of the show is as a puppet dressed in peasant’s clothing appears beside the other figure and a few of the children cheer. 

‘Falka has killed her family and skinned mages alive! Who shall save us? How shall we survive?’

The voice trails off as Yennefer moves down the road. Ahead, Tissaia has stopped her horse next to a tall stone and wood house with a sign hanging above the door - two silver fish swimming around a gold ring. She is speaking to a man wearing a leather apron outside, a whole sheep thrown over his shoulder. Yennefer rides up behind them in time to catch a bit of their conversation.

‘...preparing peppered roast lamb tonight, but we’ve some salmon left if you fancy something lighter. There is a stable in the back for your horses - I’ll send Sanile out to take them in.’

The horses are soon handed off to the innkeeper’s son and the women are led inside the house. The bottom of the building is relatively narrow at the entrance, leaving room for a staircase to one side, but opens up to a wider space at the back where there are people sitting at tables. The scent of spiced food cooking fills the air inside, and the clatter of metal somewhere tells tale of utensils in the small kitchen nearby.

A rattle in the corner draws Yennefer’s eyes. Three men are gambling with bone dice and a wooden cup, taking turns tossing the dice on the table. A pair of dwarves beyond them are playing a card game, mugs of some liquor beside them. 

‘A gambling house?’ Yennefer turns to Tissaia. ‘ _This_ is where you plan to meet your contact?’

Tissaia shakes her head, looking over at the serving woman behind the counter before turning back to follow the innkeeper up the narrow stairs. ‘No, we meet with them tomorrow, a few hours ride from here. I am expecting a delivery of supplies in Kagen - and the horses need a rest as it is.’

Glancing back at Yennefer, she grimaces, adjusting her cloak. ‘Now, I am off to have a proper bath for the first time in days and then will go collect what I came for. You are welcome to spend the day as you wish - I shan’t trouble you until tomorrow.’

——

A knock on the door to Yennefer’s room upstairs makes her pause her comb mid-stroke through her dark hair. 

Tissaia had left three hours earlier to pick up her mysterious supplies, leaving Yennefer time to bathe and clean herself of the dirt and dust from the road that had stubbornly remained in spite of daily washes in rivers and cold mountain streams. 

‘A gentleman to see you, Madam. He says he’s from Redania.’ It’s the voice of the innkeeper who showed them upstairs that morning. 

Frowning, Yennefer sets down the comb on the nightstand. 

‘Show him in,’ she calls out.

The wooden door opens to reveal the form of a massive figure in shockingly bright clothing. The man is so tall that he has to duck his head under the door frame to enter the room. 

'Forgive my intrusion, Madam.' 

The kindest description for the visitor is that he is solidly built. He has a weak chin on a thick jaw that carries several days worth of stubble, small beady blue eyes, and a nose that is too large for his face. The man is young, barely out of his teens, if even that, but he can’t weigh less than twenty stone, and the colours of his clothes make his overall appearance all the more bizarre. 

‘That will depend entirely on the purpose of your visit,’ Yennefer says, her eyes narrowing as she looks him up and down. ‘I didn’t catch your name, sir.’

‘Dijkstra. Sigismund Dijkstra.' His voice is deep and carries the rough edge of a Redanian country accent. 

‘And what, may I ask, my dear Dijkstra, has brought you to Kagen this fine afternoon? Are you here for the sheep market? I hear the black-faced lambs are a particularly good price this year.’

'I’m here to play at the tables downstairs,’ he says, turning around to take in the room, eyeing the small window with the drawn curtains. ‘I’m rather fond of dice, and Kagen has an open tolerance towards gambling that is pleasantly refreshing.’

‘Why do I sense that there is another purpose to your presence?’

Dijkstra grimaces. ‘Unofficially, I have also come on business.’ He moves over to the other wooden chair near the window and sits. The chair creaks ominously as his bulk settles down on it. ‘My organization is based in Oxenfurt and specializes in, shall we say, the collection of information, domestic and otherwise.'

Yennefer's eyes trail down the man's yellow and blue striped doublet, and to the brilliant red hose. Her head tilts to one side and her lips turn up at the corners in a wry smile. 

'I do confess I would have sooner placed you as a member of a travelling trope of mummers, given your...peculiar...choice of clothing.’

Dijkstra shrugs. ‘Black silks or bright, fully-dressed or naked as the day they were born, I assume everyone is a spy. It simplifies things enormously.’

‘As to the purpose of my visit -,’ he continues, leaning back and folding his arms in front of him. ‘- perhaps I should start with some backstory about the misery that the last week has been for me. Believe me, if I ever see a carriage again, it will be too soon.’

Yennefer raises her eyebrows, waiting for him to continue. 

'You may not have heard, but the head of my organization met with an unfortunate accident earlier this week in Aedirn. Stumbled down a staircase after leaving the king’s wedding - piss-drunk, we’re told - and fell on his own dagger. Found dead at the bottom by a servant.'

‘How terribly tragic,’ Yennefer says in a voice that carries no sympathy at all. ‘An unfortunate accident, I am certain.’

'Perhaps.' Dijkstra smiles blandly. ‘Interestingly enough, that very same evening one of our Redanian court mages was attacked in Tretogor by an assassin who happened to be also be member of the Intelligence agency. Fortunately the mage captured the man alive. She was able to extract the names of planned targets - all mages - before he... _passed on_. Your travelling companion was on that list, along with her destination.’

‘You are sharing a great deal of information for a spy, Dijkstra - I’m beginning to have concerns about your longevity as one. I imagine you have a point to all this?’

‘The point? Redanian Intelligence has been infiltrated by foreign agents - and whether it is the Nilfgaardians or some other country, it doesn’t matter, because the end result will be the same.’ Dijkstra steeples his fingers together and fixes Yennefer with a hard stare. 'If Redania is suspected of plotting to move against the mages, it doesn’t take a brilliant mind to understand that life would generally be a miserable pile of shit for everyone involved and a lot of innocent people would die.’

Yennefer stands and moves towards the table where a bottle of wine is resting on a side table. She pours herself a goblet and returns to her seat by the desk, waiting for him to continue speaking.

‘To make matters worse -‘ Dijkstra continues, waving a huge hand, ‘- we’ve also learned that some of the planted agents - again, no idea which organization they work for - managed to bolster a Novigrad cult already predisposed to extremism. The Novigrad zealots are now moving around the countryside proselytizing violence towards mages, druids, and any poor wretch who doesn’t fit their idea of normal.'

‘They’ve created witch hunters, you mean,’ Yennefer cuts in.

It’s not a new concept, historically. The Brotherhood has managed to quash much of the Northern resentment to mages over the centuries by being generally useful for both kings and commoners to have on hand. But simple minds tend to want simple solutions for life's problems, and when magic fails - be it a sick child who died after a bush witch did the best that they could to heal them, or a lost flock that a pellar could not find - it is easy for commoners to accuse magic users of evil intent.

‘Yes.’ Dijkstra scratches his stubbled chin. ‘And as you might imagine, our network of trusted spies is running rather low at the moment. The two court mages have been testing everyone we employ but it’s a slow process tracking agents down - and I was one of the first to be released after they rummaged around my brain with magic.’

‘And pray tell, why did you come all the way down to the South to meet with me?’

‘I was sent here by the court mage who was attacked - she's rather occupied at the moment, if you might imagine. Our organization is proposing an exchange of information for assurance that Tissaia de Vries does not come to Redania.'

Yennefer breaks out into laughter despite herself. 

‘What would possibly make Tissaia want to go all the up to Redania?’

‘Because the head of our organization was somehow able to instantly cross the 400 mile distance from Tretogor to Vengerberg the day of Virfuril’s wedding, before he ended up dead at the bottom of a staircase.' Dijkstra hesitates, obviously taking the time to choose his next words carefully. ‘And more to the point, I have proof that a mage from the Brotherhood met with him that same afternoon in Tretogor and passed on certain supplies that may be used to nullify the use of magic.’

Dead silence greets this news. Yennefer's frozen expression of cold fury must be concerning because Dijkstra leans forward, eyes narrowing. 

‘It is in our interest to maintain a cordial relationship with that mage who helped him portal to Aedirn,’ he says. ‘There are three villages quarantined near Redania’s Eastern border - they’ve been infected by an unknown illness. That particular mage is helping us find a cure, and I cannot allow him to be harmed.’

‘And I am so very close to opening a portal up to his fucking tower and murdering him myself,’ Yennefer hisses back. 

‘Then six hundred Redanians are going to die, and potentially thousands more.’ 

‘Oh, is dear old Stregobor cooking warm broth and tucking them into their beds each night?’ Yennefer says scornfully. ‘Find someone else to get your cure.’

‘I have assurance that Stregobor is the only mage capable of finishing the work in time - and since he’s cured several people already who were close to death - we believe him. Hope from his research is the only thing that keeps the villagers from pushing past the king’s sentries and fleeing. If they do attempt to flee, the army has strict instructions to torch all three villages and their inhabitants rather than risk the spread of the illness to other parts of the kingdom.’ 

Yennefer’s hand is clenched around her wine goblet, her knuckles white.

‘I have about as much hope as a butterfly does against a tornado of stopping you from doing what you wish.’ Dijkstra’s expression is grave. 'But you can imagine what a bunch of dead peasants might do to amplify the new distrust towards magic that is being fueled by the group from Novigrad. Tensions are already high enough, and the king’s army burning his own citizens would be more than enough to start a civil uprising against the crown, and against all magic users.’

He pulls a small pouch from his belt and tosses it on to the bed.

‘This was on the assassin in Tretogor. My advice is not to touch this with your bare hands. Show it to your companion - I imagine she’ll want to see it. Let us deal with this, and don’t get in Redania’s way.’

He gets up out of his chair and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

Yennefer sits back, fury still boiling in her belly. After a moment she waves her fingers and dispels the charm she'd surreptitiously cast when Dijkstra began to speak.

Every word he had said had been true, or at least he had believed it to be true.

\---

Tissaia returns just before dark, carrying a bundled package wrapped in waxed cloth in her arms. 

‘I had a visitor while you were out.’

Tissaia doesn’t seem surprised by the woman sitting on her bed, and walks over to place the package on the dresser without more than a glance at Yennefer. 

Yennefer watches the woman as she removes her cloak and doffs her leather gloves, setting them neatly on the table.

‘A member of the Redania Intelligence agency, giant of a man, dresses like a colour-blind Toussaint minstrel. Apparently he was sent by the Tretogor court mages to warn you to leave Redania to its own devices while they deal with civil unrest and the infiltration of their own spy network.’

If Tissaia is surprised by this news, it does not show.

‘He claimed Stregobor was involved in the attempt on your life in Aedirn.’

‘I am aware.’

‘ _Aware_.’ Yennefer’s voice is strained. ‘I tell you that another member of your precious Brotherhood is helping assassins track you down, and all you can say is that you are _aware_.’

‘It is why I wished to avoid opening portals, Yennefer, he would instantly know where we were. We did not ride all this way because I fancied a week-long jaunt on horse-back.’ 

Yennefer clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in irritation. ‘What were you planning to do if he came after you? Without magic, too, since you seem so disinclined to use it at the moment.’

To Yennefer's surprise, Tissaia smiles. ‘Don’t be naive - Stregobor is a coward and predictable one at that: He’d send others to do the work for him. He fled Mirthe and Kovir, and countless other places whenever he sensed danger and is presently clinging to the safety of his tower in Redania like a limpet.’ 

‘And if he does send others? Your dagger isn’t going to stop a group of armed men set on ending your life, Tissaia. Even if you weren't saving your magic - you could still be overwhelmed.’

Tissaia looks up from her reflection in the mirror and meets the other woman’s eyes.

‘And that is why I have you, Yennefer,’ she says quietly. 

Yennefer forcefully exhales and strides over to the window. She stares out over the distant river beyond the willow trees, her arms tightly crossed.

A weight has settled in the middle of her chest.

After a long moment, she hears the sound of footsteps and sees movement in her peripheral vision. Tissaia has moved to stand beside her.

Yennefer watches as rain drops trickle down the panes of glass. It is nearing dusk, and the sun has disappeared behind the rain clouds, casting the land in grey. The cold seeps in from the edges of the widow, chilling compared to the relative warmth of the room.

‘What does it feel like?’ she finally murmurs. ‘Gathering magic for that long?’

There is a pause, and then Tissaia sighs.

‘It feels as though my attention is always split,’ she says. ‘Balancing the excess is like carrying a goblet filled to the brim across a crowded room - always a moment and a misstep away from spilling over the sides. Sleep is almost impossible.’

A creak of the floorboards as the other woman turns, and Yennefer feels a light touch on her arm.

‘I appreciate your help with this.’ Tissaia says quietly.

Yennefer doesn’t look at her. After a moment, Tissaia moves back to the dresser. 

'There was something else,’ Yennefer says. 'He brought something from Tretogor he wanted you to see.'

At Tissaia’s quizzical glance. Yennefer nods towards the side table where the small leather bag that Dijkstra had given her is resting. 

Tissaia upends the bag onto the polished wood surface. There is a metallic clang as two thin bands of silvery metal drop out, each about as wide as a man's thumb and just large enough to fit over a wrist, a locking mechanism completing the circle.

'Mined in Kovir.’ Tissaia says. She's now preoccupied with unbuttoning the cuffs of her sleeves. ‘Stregobor will have had them made - he lived there for a time several centuries ago. The dimeritium there was initially considered useless until he discovered the anti-magic properties that could be harnessed with proper annealing.’ She grimaces, glancing back at the shackles. ‘Unfortunately, Falka used it during her bloody crusade - and subdued the mages left in Mirthe with dimeritium cuffs she’d stolen when she razed the stronghold. The captured mages couldn’t defend themselves as she skinned them alive. One of the casualties was a member of the Chapter - and a close associate of Stregobor’s.'

Yennefer has heard some of this story before, during a history lecture from one of the teachers in Aretuza decades ago when she was a student. Falka had torn a bloody path through Redania and Temeria in her quest to gain her father’s crown. She’d murdered her father and stepmother and her two half-brothers, imprisoned her adopted sister, and destroyed the Brotherhood’s old stronghold in Mirthe. Tens of thousands were killed by her followers before she was caught and hung by the surviving Northern kings. With Mirthe burned to the ground, Aretuza became the new seat of power for the Brotherhood and the Chapter. Young sorceresses and mages were warned about the dangers of dimeritium - the great equalizer between ordinary humans and those that used magic. 

'Why is he so set on you?' she asks. ‘It’s ludicrous to think that you wouldn’t figure out it was him who helped the assassins.’

Tissaia looks over at her shoulder at Yennefer. The woman’s fine features are sharply shadowed in the candlelight, and her emerald earrings glow dimly.

‘I expect Stregobor was hopeful that the man he helped would be successful in his killing blow and that he would never need to worry about me again. As to the _why_ , I imagine he hasn't quite forgiven me for the punishment meted out for his leading role in the prophecy of the Black Sun. His actions irreparably damaged the Chapter’s relations with some of the noble families - I’m not certain that Toussaint will ever accept a mage back into their court.’

‘You were the one who led the charges against him, I take it.’

‘I am opposed to killing innocent babies, Yennefer, which may come as a surprise to you. Now, I have things to prepare for tomorrow, and I imagine you will enjoy sleeping on a proper bed for once. Good night.’

\----

They leave Kagen after a morning meal and ride for a little over three hours down the west road, stopping only to water the horses. The sun is shining in between the slowly-moving rain clouds, and the trees glow in the changing light.

It is sprinkling rain when they arrive at the assigned meeting place - a large property with a tall mansion and several small outbuildings. The stone walls surrounding the grounds are covered in sprawling masses of climbing roses, the vines still clinging to their blush-coloured blossoms. The flowers are sweetly scented even in the damp air. 

The manor house inside the walls is constructed from white stone and half-timber and rises to a full three stories. There are a row of carriages parked to one side of the grounds, and a number of armed guards patrol the wall.

A well-dressed man in a blue velvet coat is waiting for them when they pass through the gate and ride into the main grounds. Two guards carrying long halberds and wearing steel breastplates are standing behind him. 

‘You seem to have lost your way, ladies,’ the man says, his voice inflected with a soft Metiannan accent. ‘The estate does not allow visitors. May I direct you back to the main road?’

‘A ragamuffin directed us to your services,’ Tissaia says smoothly, reaching inside her cloak and taking out a sealed letter with a seal Yennefer recognizes as Virfuril’s. She hands it down to the man and sits back in her saddle. ‘Perhaps this will provide some measure of reassurance as to our intentions.’

The man blinks and looks them over more closely, then down at the letter in his hands. After examining the red wax crest, his face relaxes.

‘Of course, Madam.’ He snaps his fingers, and two guards step forward. ‘These men will take your horses, and your belongings will be brought to you. If you would please follow me?’

The man leads them into the nearest building, trailed by a servant loaded with their bags.

Tissaia revealed very little on their ride that morning, but Yennefer has heard rumours of this place and she’s aware that Virfuril has visited it on trips disguised as hunting excursions. An exclusive house of pleasure for the elite filled with the most beautiful and the most talented in the arts of love, the secret of its location kept closely guarded, with only select invitations extended by those who ran it. Nobles and gentry and the wealthy would travel for weeks to visit, and many would be turned away. The prices were known to be exorbitant and the location changed several times a year to various locations across the Continent.

The interior of the manor is just as grand as the grounds outside. Oil paintings in heavy gilded frames line the either side of walls - realistic pastorals, sumptuously life-like foods, and an erotica tableau of naked figures. Beautiful sculptures made from marble - statues of nude woman and muscular figures in armour. 

As they walk through the house, Yennefer also catches brief glimpses inside the rooms on either side of the hallway. 

Women in fine gowns chatting and laughing around a game of cards, served by nude men carrying platters of wine and fine foods.

A giggling woman serving grapes to a man in a blindfold.

A musician singing a ballad in the center of a small room, surrounded by women reclining on chairs and day beds. All have languid and relaxed expressions - the result of fisstech if the sharp smell emanating from the room is any indication.

They are shown upstairs to a room on the second floor. The space is small, but well-furnished, with a wood and paper screen, a pitcher and basin on a table with a surprisingly large silvered glass mirror above it. A chair near the door completes the set.

‘You may prepare yourselves here,’ the man in the blue coat says. ‘I shall return to collect you within the hour.’

The servant leaves the bundle that Tissaia had brought along from Kagen on the bench. Tissaia opens it as soon as the men have left and hands a carefully packed gown wrapped in linen to Yennefer, setting a pair of black slippers made of soft leather on it.

'Wear this,' is all she says before disappearing behind the screen with a similar bundle.

Yennefer has no such compunctions about her body and strips to the skin, easing on the delicate gown with care - marveling at the craft put into the garment. When she has finished dressing, and has smoothed out light creases in the fabric with a faint bit of magic, Yennefer can’t help but stare at her reflection in the mirror, eyebrows raised.

To call the dark silk gown 'sheer' would be a kindness - it is blatantly revealing, from the neckline that dips down between her breasts, to the open back that hides nothing, and a slit in the bottom hem of the gown that reaches almost to the tops of her thighs. 

'What exactly are you here for?' Yennefer says as she begins to pin up her hair in place above her neck. ‘This seems like a great deal of effort to put towards a simple meeting.’

'I am here to see someone who is very particular about their social appearances,' Tissaia answers from behind the screen. 'It was a meeting which could not be obtained any other way - and I needed a letter from Virfuril to gain entrance to this place as it was.'

‘They wouldn’t let a member of the Chapter inside?’

‘Mages and magic are not elevated here to the same degree as the North, Yennefer,’ Tissaia says, moving out from behind the screen.

Opening her mouth to say something suitably cutting, Yennefer momentarily forgets to breathe. Her mind has gone blank at the sight of the other women’s appearance.

Tissaia is wearing a blood-red gown made from silk and lace. It is fractionally more modest than Yennefer's dress, if only because of the coverage to the back of the garment. There is a semblance of a corset in the solid wrapping of smooth fabric around the woman's narrow waist, but the lace around her shoulders is whisper-thin to the point of translucency. Combined with Tissaia’s unrelentingly upright posture, the amount of pale cleavage on display hovers the delicate line between intriguing and indecent. 

Tissaia looks so completely unlike her usual buttoned-up self that Yennefer doubts she could have recognized the woman at a distance. 

If the sight of Yennefer in her dress is an equally pleasant one, Tissaia is hiding it well. Her eyes have not strayed below Yennefer’s neck.

‘The ambassador of Cintra is renowned for a personal weakness.’ Tissaia reaches up Yennefer’s shoulder with a frown, correcting the fall of the dark fabric so that it matches the other side, pressing out a wrinkle that must have set there while the dress was in its linen wrapping. ‘I plan to capitalize on it.’

‘How?’ 

Yennefer is trying very hard not to look down at the woman's chest.

‘The house will give him a selection of offerings, and I need to convince him to pick us out of the crowd, without the choice looking too suspicious to onlookers. He is well-known to enjoy watching women pleasure each other.’

Evidently satisfied with Yennefer’s appearance, Tissaia sits down at the table and picks up a small pot of pigment and a brush.

‘That is your plan?’ Yennefer says in disbelief. ‘Entertaining him with some grand fantasy so he’ll be convinced to speak with you behind closed doors?’

‘He is aware of the plan, but I do not wish to tip off the others who will be in the room with us.’ Tissaia glances up at Yennefer’s reflection in the mirror, the brush momentarily paused near her lips. ‘I can always use one of the women of the house if you are feeling shy.’

‘ _Shy?_ ’ Yennefer's voice is full of scorn. ‘You were uncertain I’d be willing to play along - it’s why you didn’t tell me before now.'

Tissaia ignores her, exchanging the brush for a smaller one and applying another layer to her lips. 

‘Will this be a problem, Yennefer?’

‘Convincing a crowd of lustful onlookers?’ Yennefer’s voice has dropped to a deeper register. She allows her eyes to follow the curve of Tissaia’s neck to the smooth lines of her shoulder blades through the thin fabric of the gown. ‘No. I’m not some blushing maiden.’

‘Good. We will have one chance at this.’

\-----

They are led to a large room with a high ceiling on the second floor, a row of tall windows lining one side. There are chairs and simple beds scattered around the floor. Servants move about, preparing an assortment of food and drinks on one long line of tables closest to the doors. 

There are a dozen others already there, in pairs and groups of threes, in varying states of undress or complete nudity, each set arranged in one part of the room like livestock at market. 

Head held high - Tissaia walks over to a cushioned and comfortable-looking narrow bed some distance away from the door, and Yennefer follows her. Light from the window shines down on the bed, leaving the space warm. 

Nearby in the corner are two nude men astride what looks to be an exquisitely-stuffed unicorn with lifelike glass eyes. Yennefer manages to avoid staring for too long, but her mind takes a meandering path through the possibilities and she distantly wonders how one might go about acquiring such a piece. 

Tissaia sits in the middle of the bench, facing away from the door, arranging her long skirts so that they drape smoothly over her legs. After a moment, Yennefer settles beside her, close enough that she is within reach. 

Soon after they arrive, a beautifully-dressed woman standing near the entrance claps her hands twice. As one, each person in the room turns to their respective partners and settles into what seem to be practiced positions, poised to start their performance.

The doors open and seven figures walk into the room. Each person is dressed in Southern fashions - a couple in silk robes from Nazair, two knights in distinctive Toussaint doublets with gold trim, and three other men wearing equally fine clothing and jewelry.

The room comes alive with movement the instant they enter, as each group does their best to entice interest from the newcomers, some through impressively acrobatic movements. A group of three women - dressed in faint slips of fabric - have already attracted the attention of the pair from Toussaint, and the house madam comes smiling towards them to arrange a room. 

The rest of the prospective clients wander through the space, looking at the living offerings on display, and though Tissaia barely moves, Yennefer feels eyes on her as she becomes the woman’s sole point of interest. She feels a brush against her temple as Tissaia smooths a stray piece of Yennefer’s hair behind her ear, the light touch lingering longer than it needs to, the pads of the woman’s fingertips barely tracing her skin. 

One of the newcomers - a man wearing a gold-embroidered jerkin with a blue silk sash - comes close to them. He is middle-aged, with a full head of reddish hair and a neat beard.

Tissaia’s other hand brushes up against her wrist to signal her. According to the plan, they are to continue this charade of light touches until the man waves over the house representative and they can go talk with him in private.

Yennefer has other ideas. It is a simple matter, she’s decided. She’s going to show Tissaia exactly what she thinks of this ridiculous plan of hers. She can excuse this as catharsis, and then the persistent, confounding feelings that have settled in her chest for the last week will dissipate and Yennefer can go on her merry way again, free of Tissaia and from the intrusive thoughts that the woman brings with her.

And she’ll be damned if she'll let some well-paid whore touch Tissaia in her presence - even the very thought of it brings hot waves of jealousy to the surface. Yennefer doesn’t wish to examine that particular emotional connection too closely for fear of what it might uncover about herself. 

Yennefer takes charge. Locking eyes with the man in the sash, she nods imperiously towards the cushioned chair nearest the bed.

‘Sit down if you want a taste of what can be yours, my lord,’ she orders in a clear voice that echoes through the room. 'And stay quiet.'

He looks surprised at being addressed so directly, but after a brief hesitation, sits down as instructed.

Tissaia's eyebrows rise incrementally and the corners of her delicate mouth twitch downwards.

Ignoring the expression of disapproval, Yennefer reaches up with her hands to gently cradle either side of Tissaia’s sharp jaw and kisses her with clear intent.

To her credit, Tissaia doesn’t avoid her touch, and even distracted by the heat of the woman’s mouth, Yennefer feels her own skin prickle into goosebumps as fingertips drag slowly down her bare shoulders. The kiss brings their bodies together, and the softness of Tissaia’s bosom against her own is heavenly. She catches a trace of the faint floral scent that the woman has applied, and she can’t help herself from following it.

Yennefer moves to trace the clear line of Tissaia’s beautiful neck with her lips, peppering the smooth skin with small kisses. A strand of Tissaia’s soft hair has come loose and tickles Yennefer’s ear as the woman tilts her head to allow greater access to her bare throat. Yennefer is caught by the sudden impulse to pull out the silver pins that hold the dark mass at the base of the woman’s neck, and she reins in that desire in with no small amount of effort on her part.

A demure glance with half-lidded eyes towards the man in the chair shows that his attention is focused solely on them, and he is not alone. The couple from Nazair have moved over to watch, and even the men on the stuffed unicorn have paused in their acrobatic act to stare at the women. 

Tissaia starts to pull back from her touch, but Yennefer is having none of it and drags the woman close again with an insistent arm around her slender waist, pressing their bodies together. The kiss this time is firm to the point of bruising, and Yennefer suddenly feels a small pop of pain as her lower lip is nipped by sharp teeth.

'I think that will be quite enough.' Tissaia murmurs against the shell of her ear. 

Her hand has come up to rest around Yennefer’s neck, slender fingers encircling her throat. There is just the faintest threat of pressure behind the hold.

Never one to give up so easily, Yennefer leans into Tissaia’s hand, allowing a mewling sound of need to escape her chest, her throat vibrating against the woman’s palm like a cat’s purr. This has gone beyond pretending, and every thought she’d had about taking charge has been snuffed out like a candle. Even if there are two dozen others in the room, Yennefer is ready to lift up the woman’s skirts and have her on the bed right now, and whatever carefully constructed plots Tissaia has concocted with this man can go fuck themselves.

The hungry look must show in Yennefer’s eyes because Tissaia suddenly smiles at her, and Yennefer feels her heart come to a standstill at how genuine it seems. The woman’s face is transformed into warmth and loveliness, her clear blue eyes illuminated by the afternoon sunlight from the window near them. 

'Wicked girl,' Tissaia hums.

Yennefer has had a long list of lovers over her time in Aedirn, but she has rarely felt as aroused as she feels now - and it is impossible to ignore her sensitive nipples against the fabric of her dress and the slickness of the wet heat between her legs. She watches Tissaia’s face in wonder, absorbed in finding any trace of truth to the game they are acting out, not for the first time wishing she could look into the other woman’s mind and see exactly what she was thinking.

‘My partner is too eager for me to handle, my lord.' Tissaia says, looking over at the man with the blue sash, her rich voice dripping with suggestion and her smile promising endless possibility. ‘Perhaps you can help me tame her?’

Tissaia’s firm hold around her neck has turned into a caress, sliding down the bare column of Yennefer’s throat to rest at the notch between her clavicles. Closing her eyes, Yennefer picks up the woman’s hand between her own, placing a simple kiss to the center of her palm. 

The man sitting in the chair swallows audibly. 

\----

The house madam approaches and after a short discussion with her the Cintran ambassador stands up. They walk out of the large room and up the stairs to the top floor, and silently follow the man as he brings them through a door to a beautifully decorated wood-paneled antechamber and into the brightly-lit room beyond it.

Yennefer blinks. 

A woman is standing next to the west-facing window, her form shadowed by the bright sunlight streaming in. She only turns around after the man has left, shutting the door behind him, leaving the three of them alone in the room. 

Yennefer has a better look at her face as she walks towards them.

The woman is still young, but there is little softness here, her body strong and her stance powerful, every movement deliberate and controlled. She is dressed in a fine tunic, riding breeches and leather boots, and wears a heavy blue sash made of iridescent silk thrown over one broad shoulder. The gold crest of a lion rampant pinned to the sash makes this woman none other than Queen Calanthe of Cintra.

A sheathed sword is leaning against the wall, within easy reach. 

'Archmistress Tissaia de Vries of Aretuza, I trust?' Her voice is low and has a clear undercurrent of impatience to it. 

Tissaia inclines her head. The strand of dark hair that had been loosened by Yennefer’s touch was tucked back into place as they walked upstairs, and Tissaia looks flawless in the afternoon sun.

'Your Majesty.'

‘Your reputation doesn’t do you justice - I had imagined a wizened woman leaning on a cane.' Her eyes trail down Tissaia’s body and back up to her face. ‘Forgive me for staring, but it is not often that one encounters one who is older than one’s own kingdom. I would not have recognized you.’

‘I concealed myself well, then.’

Calanthe’s dark eyes flick past Tissaia.

'Making the beautiful one with the sour expression the Aedirnian mage of King Virfuril’s.’ The queen snorts and moves over to the table laden with food to fill her goblet. 'Do extend my congratulations to your king on his recent nuptials - and my best wishes for producing a son out of his blushing Lyrian bride.'

A muscle in Yennefer's jaw twitches as she forces her expression to remain impassive. She is trying to discern whether Tissaia had known that it would be the queen who would meet with them. More distracting is the arousal she’d built up downstairs and now lingers to the point of discomfort.

'You have five minutes of my time -,’ Calanthe says as she turns back to face them, ‘- while my man goes and retrieves the ones I actually came for.’

‘The trade agreement revision in your favour was enclosed...’ Tissaia begins calmly. 

'Yes.' Calanthe waves her hand dismissively. ‘I have read the letter and will sign it, so do not waste your breath on that. We are not here to talk about Virfuril’s need to sell his grain.’

She takes a long drink from her goblet, never breaking eye contact with Tissaia.

‘What intrigued me was the second letter you’d included. To ask that of me - when members of your beloved Brotherhood were not so long ago wandering the Continent killing babies, all because of an eclipse and the ravings of a madman. What was it in the end, Archmistress - sixty girls dead or mutilated or chased into towers?’

Calanthe pushes herself off from where she is leaning against the edge of the table and crosses the room. As she moves towards Tissaia, the difference in their sizes becomes obvious: Tissaia’s slender form in the blood-red gown contrasting with the queen’s powerful frame. Each woman is stretched up to their full height, chins raised, staring unblinkingly at the other. Yennefer has a fleeting image of two cats sizing each other up.

‘Their actions were inexcusable and staggeringly foolish.’ Tissaia’s voice is even, and she does not move as the woman comes into her space. ‘Whatever pure intentions they may have had, the mages involved ignored wiser voices in their lust for eliminating what they saw as a threat and were punished severely for it by the Chapter. My efforts to mitigate the damage proved too late in the end, and I do regret that I could not do more to save those girls.’

Calanthe regards her for a long moment with narrowed eyes. ‘Magic and prophecy, a wretched combination if ever there was one,’ she snorts. ‘It figures the mages involved were male - any excuse to murder a woman who threatens their power, even a child, even a baby.’

Tissaia waits. 

‘My mother told me a story when I was a girl.’ Calanthe begins, finally turning back away from Tissaia, moving over to the window to stare over the estate’s grounds. ‘A long time ago, a Temerian king fought a bloody war that had spilled over the border from Redania. His pregnant wife was captured and thrown into prison by her adoptive sister, the rebellion’s leader. The king won and freed his queen, but discovered three children with her instead of the expected twins.’ 

She pauses to sip from her goblet before continuing, her voice strong and clear. ‘The queen had gone mad in his absence and was in no state to identify the false child. Desperate, the king summoned a group of the most powerful mages in the land to tell him which of the three were his, offering gold and land in exchange for the information. The false child had been birthed by the very leader of the rebellion he had been fighting against and he planned to kill it the moment it could be identified.’

Yennefer watches Tissaia out of the corner of her eye, but the woman's expression has not changed. Calanthe continues to speak as she moves across the room towards them.

‘The leader of the mages returned from her examination and refused to reveal the child to him. The king was forced to raise all three as his own, never quite certain which one was the impostor birthed by Falka.’ 

Calanthe has returned to stand in front of Tissaia, and she leans forward until she is next to Tissaia’s ear, almost brushing against the emerald dangling there.

‘You saved a child from being killed many generations ago,’ she says softly. ‘And while the wisdom of that choice may be in question, I allowed you this meeting only because of that kindness, and the trust that my mother Adalia had in you.’ 

And Calanthe straightens up to her full height and exits the room without another word. 

Tissaia gives a quick shake of her head when Yennefer moves towards her, and Yennefer stops herself after a step, feeling a wave of irritation at being forced to watch from a distance whatever game the two women are playing at.

Calanthe returns after a full minute, carrying a large bundle in her arms.

A girl - no more than two years of age - is fast asleep against her chest. A shock of white-blonde hair and a cherubic face makes her so unlike her dark-haired mother. A toy horse made from wool is clutched to her chest.

‘Tell me if I can expect her to ruin the world, Archmistress,’ she says simply.

Stepping forward, Tissaia reaches out and holds her palm above the sleeping child's forehead. Yennefer watches as the woman goes completely still and her gaze becomes unfocused, as if concentrating on something at a great distance.

It is a full minute before Tissaia closes her hand and steps away.

'Aretuza will not trouble you,’ she says simply. ‘There is no danger to the child that I can sense, and no sign of the Elder Blood expressed in her.’

Calanthe closes her eyes. The physical relief shows throughout her posture and the set of her broad shoulders. 

‘I think I would have removed your head from your shoulders if you’d said anything else,’ she mutters, gazing back down at the sleeping girl. 

Tissaia does not blink at the threat. ‘I have not lied to you.’

‘That well may be.’ Calanthe says as she looks at Tissaia without expression. ‘Now get the hell out of my rooms and do not seek me or my daughter out ever again, Archmistress. Mages will never be welcome in Cintra as long as I am queen.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice that I haven't included certain character names in the story summary tags - I didn't want to spoil the ending of this chapter. 
> 
> I am reaching into more of the books to add background to this very show-based fic but the dynamic that Stregobor and Tissaia have in the show seems ripe with a history of mutual antagonism and I couldn't resist. 
> 
> The conclusion to this story will come within the month, potentially sooner. I do make an effort to respond to every comment - even the anonymous ones, and do enjoy exploring your reactions and questions.


	4. The Bridge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to Arwen (wordsbyarwen on Tumblr, troiing on AO3) for making this chapter more readable and preventing public abuse of semicolons. You've probably already read her Yennefer/Tissaia fic, but if you haven't, you're in for a treat.
> 
> And, the chapter count has changed to five chapters.

\---

The rough dirt road is empty and still, the silence broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves on packed dirt and the quiet burbling of long-tailed nightjars in the surrounding thicket. The moon hangs ripe and gleaming bright high beyond the shadowed forest canopy. The temperature has cooled since the gloaming changed into blue-black sky, but the night air still carries the sharp scent of autumn; crisp leaves and damp earth. 

It has been more than seven hours of constant travel since leaving the clandestine meeting with Calanthe, their journey only interrupted by the time it took to swiftly change into riding clothes. 

Tissaia has been pushing the horses to the limit of their endurance ever since. To the crossing at Sodden Hill, as she had finally shared with Yennefer when they’d left the manor. And it had been made clear that they needed to reach the bridge before midnight.

Yennefer’s grey gelding has begun to lag behind Tissaia’s mare, tripping in places where the road is uneven, and nearly tossing Yennefer to the ground on a particularly bad stumble through a too-deep puddle. She needs to squeeze him forward into a reluctant trot to follow behind Tissaia’s mare, ignoring the sharp pang of pain to her calves - her legs rubbed raw from the stirrup leathers. 

Yennefer doesn’t complain about the length of time spent in the saddle, or the secrecy of the meeting with Calanthe that Tissaia hadn’t deigned to disclose to her, or the fact that they have not eaten since the morning. She grimly follows in silence, because there will be an end to it soon, and then she can return to her place at Aedirn and the comforts of the castle and the courtly headaches she is accustomed to. 

And she will not ever need to see or speak to Tissaia again.

(And the quivering, desirous thing coiled in her belly will have nothing more to feed on, and wither away.)

\---

It is approaching midnight when they leave the forest and begin the winding ride up to the top of the ridge, towards the sharp outline of the sprawling fort silhouetted against the faint light of the stars. 

The keep is deserted - it is clear now that they are closer. No light from lit torches, no smoke from night fires, no moving shapes on the walls or fluttering banners on the battlements. The only sign of recent life is an old farmer’s cart with a broken axle, abandoned to one side of the road in a ditch - the wooden shafts half buried in mud, spokes overgrown with grass. 

Yennefer looks around as they lead the horses on foot under the archway of the gatehouse entrance and into the empty courtyard. She had expected a toll booth with customs guards, charging for passage - she has a dim memory of such a thing here when she’d last been through this way a decade earlier with Virfuril’s retinue on some delegation or other, but instead the large beams forming the roof of the guardhouse near the entrance have rotted through, and the tallest tower beyond has collapsed inwards. 

‘Abandoned?’ Yennefer asks, glancing over at Tissaia, who is walking nearby, the bay mare following after her on a loose rein. 

‘There have been no guards posted here for the last two years since the unrest in the south,’ comes the quiet reply. ‘Sodden cannot even afford to keep more than a handful of soldiers in the populated towns and Brugge has no army of significance and will soon be swallowed by Temeria...’

Tissaia glances up at the moon shining through the thinnest of clouds to their left, moving across the sky to the west. One small strand of dark hair has come loose from the side of her part, curling slightly from the damp air. 

‘...And even the wealthiest of kings would have a difficult time keeping soldiers at their posts here tonight,’ she finishes dryly.

Yennefer is well aware of why, because it is one of the few old wive’s tales that is based in a particular truth. The separation between the spheres is thinnest during the full moon, and magic and relicts of the old world are at their strongest now. Everyone will be behind a thick, well-locked door tonight, families gathered around a warm fire, safe from the creeping dark and the monsters that thrive there.

They have arrived at the curving arch that forms the south-side bridge gatehouse. The structure is in similar shape to the rest of the fort: the mortar falling out in chunks, gaps where bricks disintegrated over the centuries, a broken portcullis that exists only in pieces - the metal scrounged out of the wood by scrap collectors. An empty water trough for horses long-past is set along one side of the high-ceilinged passageway. It is half-filled with greenish water - undoubtedly rain that has run from the holes in the roof above. 

Tissaia ties her mare to a metal ring on the wall near the trough, loosens the saddle girth and begins to rummage through her saddle bags. Inferring that this will be the place of the mysterious magical task, Yennefer leaves her gelding tethered to the matching hitching ring on the opposite side of the gatehouse and - seeing that Tissaia is still occupied with her search, walks out into the open onto the bridge that spans the ravine. 

The road across is almost a quarter mile in length and just wide enough to allow two carts to pass side-by-side. The individual stones are carved from clear white marble - stone that is not to be found within two hundred miles of this spot - and the structure gleams palely under the moon, reflecting the faint light. Compared to the ruin of the keep, the bridge is immaculate: no cracks, no broken edges, only polished surfaces and smooth seams of mortar.

There is a distant roar of water below her feet, the sound echoing off the walls of the surrounding canyon. The Yaruga surges five hundred feet beneath the bridge, the whirling torrent of white waves and currents hidden from view, too far to see at night. The river continues another seventy miles westwards to the outlet of the Great Sea.

‘It predates the fort itself by centuries, and is one of the oldest surviving structures on the Continent.' 

Tissaia has walked up behind Yennefer, her cloak wrapped around her shoulders, the warm fur against her face. She has a small cloth bag with her, clutched loosely in one hand.

'Each piece of this bridge was enchanted with powerful spells of stability by elven sages,' she continues, coming to a stop on Yennefer's left. 'Undetectable to most, but holding enough strength that an army of men could not break a single stone even if given ten years to accomplish the task.’

Yennefer brushes her glove over the parapet’s edge - the stone cool to the touch. She sends out a controlled burst of magic and feels a faint thrum of an echo return to her hand almost instantly. Clenching her fist, feeling the warmth of magic lingering still, she glances over at Tissaia. 

‘And you have brought me with you to help with what, exactly? I am no stone mason, but even to my uneducated eyes the bridge looks to be in excellent condition.’

‘It is my aim that it remain that way.’ Tissaia’s expression is inscrutable. ‘I shall be renewing the spells of protection placed on the bridge, using Mahakam portal’s keystone as a focus.’

Yennefer stares at her.

' _This_ is what you have been consolidating your magic for? You went to all this time and effort to protect a miserable magical construct that cart horses shit on as they cross? What use or importance could this bridge _possibly_ have to you, Tissaia?’

Tissaia closes the distance between them, until she is close enough to touch. Her blue eyes are dark even in the moonlight, her long lashes shadows against her pale face.

'And if I were to wrap my hands around your neck and start to squeeze, Yennefer, how long do you suppose you could stay conscious without air to your lungs or blood flowing to your head?'

Yennefer exhales forcefully from her nose, refusing to look away from Tissaia’s penetrating gaze. Her insides are tight, and the cool breeze has settled into her skin. She shifts her cloak around her body, irritated and cold.

'The bridge is the conduit of commerce and life between the North and the South,’ Tissaia continues quietly in her frustratingly even voice. 'If the Northern Kingdoms ever do manage to settle with the South, it will be the only route of significance. For this reason alone it is priceless beyond measure and something to be protected.’

'Peace?’ Yennefer spits out, scorn clear on her face. ‘Harmony? You sacrificed a year of your life, without magic, for the slimmest speck of a chance at future cooperation? Your precious bridge could just as easily be used by an invading force, Tissaia!’

‘I have travelled these roads for centuries.’ Tissaia’s voice is more urgent, and her gloved hand rests on her chest, near where her pendant would be if she had it. ‘I have watched scores of kingdoms rise and fall, countless beings slaughtered for every excuse imaginable, and if I have learned _anything_ in that time, it is that working in isolation will spell the doom of all of us. Yes, the risk is there, but if we are to survive whatever terror is next thrown at us, it will only be because the races of this Continent joined together as a unified force and pushed it back as _one_.’

Silence. A small gust of wind from below the bridge rustles their cloaks, blowing Yennefer’s hair in front of her face, and she shakes it back over her shoulder. Tissaia’s expression softens.

‘If this world is in a better state of balance when I leave it, I will have done well. I am not Stregobor - I refuse to hide in a tower out of fear and suspicion, not when I can _act_.’

Yennefer snorts, but the barbed retort on her lips somehow does not come, perhaps because she can’t help but feel it would be childish to voice it in the face of such clear sincerity.

Tissaia appears to take her silence in stride and presses on.

‘The level of power required to renew this bridge’s protection will drain my magical stores to the point of collapse. I need someone I can trust to take me back to safety until I am no longer vulnerable.’

'There are dozens of mages who could do the same for you, Tissaia.’ Yennefer says coldly. ‘Why drag me out here? It certainly can’t have been because you desired my _company_.’

'Your power.’ Tissaia says simply. ‘And I knew I could trust that you would be honest in your motives, whatever you might think of me.'

But Yennefer hears what is unspoken.

She was chosen because she has never been able to hide anything from Tissaia. She is tethered to her by bonds formed long ago - an invisible leash that pulls her in whatever direction the woman pleases, for all of Yennefer’s protestations to the contrary.

'Yennefer.' 

She can hear the woman's breath catching, a faint sip of breath in the night. Tissaia is holding the cloth bag in one hand, and her left is resting on Yennefer’s wrist, fingers loosely wrapping around the space between her glove and her sleeve. 'The barrier between worlds is weakest tonight - and our world in a cycle only seen every other century. This is the only time I can complete this spell, and I will do it without your aid if I must.'

Yennefer feels her pulse pounding in her ears.

(She presses away the lurch of uncertainty.)

‘Then do it. I wish to be free of you.’ 

—

Cloud cover has moved in from the north side of the canyon, but the moonlight still shines through in a hazy circle directly above the bridge.

Yennefer has returned to where the horses are tied, and watches as Tissaia pours a circle of silver dust and powdered bone onto the surface of the stones of the roadway some distance from the south gatehouse end.

She steps into the ring of powders and lowers herself to her knees, drawing a familiar wedge of marble from the cloth bag and setting it down in front of her. The keystone is a match to the surrounding bridge,Yennefer realizes, in colour and quality, if not in size.

Tissaia rests her fingers down on the slabs that form the center path of the bridge and Yennefer hears her clear voice rise above the breeze, echoing off the smooth walls of the canyon around them, each word of Old Elder containing a power of its own as she draws on her magic for the first time in almost a year. 

It is like a distant earthquake; a deep shudder in the pattern of chaos that surrounds them, and Yennefer’s eyebrows rise of their own accord when she feels it, because it is more power than she’s ever felt outside of a casting by multiple sorcerers inside of Tor Lara. 

Tissaia has begun an enchantment she doesn’t recognize, and the darting movements of her small hands are deft and precise. Yennefer loses track of the pattern of spells after the seventh motion in a tangle of rapid castings - the woman working too quickly for her eyes to follow along, spinning threads of magic out of nothing. Yennefer recognizes bits and pieces - a spell for capture, a call for power, a binding word, another for strength. More and more, and as the minutes wear on, the net of spells expands outwards, drawing magic out of Tissaia's body and into the conjured creation that has begun to envelop the bridge.

Tissaia pauses - and then makes a grasping motion up into the sky. 

Yennefer feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, her skin prickling into goosebumps. Behind her the horses tense, the gelding leaning back on his hind legs as if to run, the mare tossing her head, stamping a front hoof in a sharp staccato as she paws at the stone.

And then... _noise_.

An explosion of bright energy engulfs the sky as a narrow spear of lightning shoots down from the heavens. It collides with the bridge in a deafening crack that splits the stillness of the night, reverberating across the canyon, and electricity arcs across the stones in ten different directions. 

Tissaia doesn’t twitch. She clenches her gloved hand into a fist deliberately. Seconds later, another bolt strikes the ground a little ways beyond the first, twenty paces beyond where the woman is kneeling.

The third flash descends directly onto the ring that Tissaia is inside, the thunder echoing off the cliffs, leaving a white-bright after-image when Yennefer reflexively closes her eyes.

The next bolt strikes in the exact same place after ten seconds, but Tissaia's circle glows on impact, leaving her unharmed.

And then another. 

Yennefer - preoccupied with settling the frantic horses with a hastily-cast calming spell - watches in disbelief as lightning comes down in the same place over and over. She sees it now: the keystone is the focus; each strike lands directly on the small wedge, the marble now glowing brighter than anything else, even the moon above.

Her own body is humming in the presence of so much magic nearby.

She has seen Tissaia channel lightning from storm clouds before, directing and redirecting it as she pleases, back when she was a student, back when she had failed to capture it in a bottle. But _this_ is calling bolts out of the barest wisps of clouds instead of harnessing the energy of a fully fledged thunderstorm, and it must take an unimaginable expense of power to pull them down repeatedly as Tissaia is doing now. Yennefer herself might manage three or four bolts before tiring.

The lightning continues - striking the circle every five seconds now, and Yennefer can feel her legs tremble as the structure shudders, the huge stones of the bridge beginning to ripple with magic, glowing faintly. There is heat too, rising from the stones of the bridge, and a gathering surge of power flowing down the trusses into the canyon far below.

This is more power than Yennefer’s ever seen anyone wield, even ten sorcerers at one time, and it is barely tethered by the woman’s slender form. 

And Yennefer’s astonishment turns into dawning realization because she remembers the grim acceptance she's seen on Tissaia's face over their journey. It had been the look of someone who was moving ever closer to what they believed would be a task that bordered on the insurmountable. 

Tissaia is grimacing, her mouth still moving as she continues the spell, the breeze carrying the traces of the words of the spell in the wake of each bolt.

The words of Old Elder are simple ones.

Seal. 

Block. 

Close. 

Close. 

_Close_. 

Whatever drivel Tissaia had fed her about cooperation and passage between kingdoms, this is not a spell merely for sustaining the bridge against physical damage. Yennefer _knows_ these words - a stray remembering of a lecture long ago about an ancient ritual of shielding - protection to prevent this world from merging with others, guarding against another Conjunction of the Spheres. 

Armed with an Aen Elle gatestone and more than four centuries of arcane knowledge, Tissaia is guarding their world against anyone or anything trying to slip through, should the planets align again in a way that makes such an impossibility even remotely possible. 

A bolt larger than the rest strikes down from the barest of clouds and lands directly on the keystone. There is a whistling whine and then a brilliant spark of light as the wedge-shaped stone shatters in an explosion of magical energy in the direction of the south gate house where Yennefer is waiting with the horses.

Yennefer throws up a shield just in time to avoid being hit by shards of stone. The shockwave of residual magic centered in the stone blows her body back into the wall of the gatehouse behind her, a flash of lightning following, diverted by the burst from the destroyed keystone, bouncing off her residual shield.

Stones are hitting the ground around her - a collapsing wall. Yennefer rolls, lurches sideways, pushing herself up onto her knees. 

A heavy thud of something that is not a wall falling beside her. Her head is spinning from where it knocked against the roadway.

The first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is the bay mare lying on the ground beside her, a horrible low sound coming from the animal’s lungs, the smell of scorched flesh hanging in the night air. She can hear the gelding squealing in terror, but he is trapped in the small space of the gatehouse by broken rubble that had fallen from the now-crumbled stone arch.

A stifled cry of pain makes her look back towards the bridge. Tissaia’s exposed skin is luminescent, glowing just as the keystone had been, just as the white stones of the bridge are glowing now. Energy is crackling around her, a dense cloud of chaos fixed to the drawn ring, pinned only by Tissaia's own power.

The bolts of lightning have stopped falling.

Yennefer’s ears pop as the surrounding air pressure changes.

She is pushing herself to her feet when she sees it form.

The space above the center of the bridge, beyond Tissaia, ripples. A vertical slice of darkness taller than the tallest tree expanding in the sky. The black line stretches wider, opening as fast as a retreating wave on the beach, the edges of the tear illuminated by the faintly glowing bridge below and the full moon above. 

Yennefer recognizes what this is, even if the thought of it existing in the first place is unimaginable, because it is a perversion of the portals used by mages; a vacuous wound where the arching structure below her feet is solid substance. 

But it is still a bridge between this place and another.

There is an icy wind coming from the gaping hole above them - so cold that it burns her face and hands, numbs her lips, stings her eyes. But when she shields her eyes with her arm and sees what is beyond the border of moonlight and sky, through the dark in-between and into the ether, Yennefer is suddenly more afraid than she’s ever been in her life.

In the black of the starless space beyond is a gigantic two-masted ship, suspended in the void. The bow's planking is covered in hoarfrost; the shrouds glisten with ice crystals. The billowing triangular sails are pale, illuminated by an unearthly, magical light, filled with something that is not air that pushes the ship steadily towards the portal’s horizon.

Yennefer has seen this ship before, carved on the wall of the cave in Mahakam where they had retrieved the keystone, and it had been stark and terrible then. And now this ship in physical form is moving closer to the edge of the rip in their reality, closer to _their_ world, and the primal fear that crawls across her skin, leeching the warmth from her body, is impossible to control.

Shapes are moving on the deck, near the high prow. 

Yennefer feels the slithering siphon of magic that comes from the ship narrow in on her, beckoning greedily with hungry arms, encouraging Yennefer to walk closer, to close the distance.

Tissaia’s power is almost spent from her efforts to stop the breach, her own magic turned against her; now, the ship has found a new tether, a fresh link to hold on to until the crossing is complete - the protector turned into a foothold on this world. 

Her consciousness is drifting, distracted and detached. She hears the whispers of strange voices around her, snatching at her magic and drawing it away, pressing her forward into a steady pace towards the center of the bridge. Her legs move of their own accord.

A sound from very far away. A distant, familiar call. She still can’t help but try to resist, to seek it out. It’s important, she knows, and she can’t leave now.

_Forwards_ , the voices invite. _Let go, release your control, let us guide you, come to us._

Another call by a single voice. (Her name, an anchor in this world.) 

The whispers from the dark creatures on the ship’s deck become more forceful, ordering compliance and control.

But Yennefer resists. She will not be harnessed, and she refuses to bow down to another in this lifetime, even for the promise of power.

It is the sharp cry of agony that disrupts the thinning connection in the end, tearing her away from the whispers, back into her own self. The sensation is that of surfacing back to consciousness like a drowning person pulled from the sea with burning lungs.

And Yennefer is suddenly awake, free of the siren-like call of the ship. 

It all comes back to her as she takes gulping gasps of icy air into her lungs. Cold wind, dark sky, glowing bridge, and Tissaia, Tissaia is still in the ring, now a scant ten feet ahead of her. The woman’s slender body is bent rigid, her back arching in a stiffening rictus of pain, the light that was rippling under her skin so recently now dimmed. Yennefer can see the invisible thread of magic that connects Tissaia to the approaching ship, the living anchor tying it to this plane.

The large portal that had been so tall when it had formed is noticeably smaller, and she can see the edges shrinking slowly. But the prow of the ship will be at the brink of the portal in moments.

Yennefer runs as fast as she can towards Tissaia and leaps forward, simultaneously sending out the most powerful stunning spell she can muster at the woman, intent on slicing the anchor at its source. 

She collides with Tissaia’s body, her momentum pushing the woman out of the dust-drawn ring and onto the stones beyond. Yennefer hits the ground first, her right shoulder taking the brunt of their combined weight as they roll. 

A popping sound in her ears and the cold wind is cut off, only the smell of burnt metal and ozone lingering around them.The bridge feels warm under Yennefer’s body, still humming on some deep magical harmonic that she can feel in her bones. 

A glance above, head swimming, spots at the edges of her vision, shows that the slender slice of darkness has disappeared, taking the ghostly ship and the whispering magics with it. 

The anchor is gone after all, exhausted and spent. 

‘Tissaia? _Tissaia!_ ’

Yennefer clutches at Tissaia’s arms, sees that the woman is limp and boneless, sees the steady trickle of blood running from her nose and from her mouth. Abandoning her efforts to shake her awake, pulling Tissaia up against her own body, Yennefer opens herself, frantic and desperate and ever so afraid of what answer might return.

There is nothing there. No answering spark when she pushes a remnant of what is left of her own magic into her chest. 

Tissaia is pale and deathly cold to the touch. Her pulse is thready against Yennefer's scrabbling fingers around her bare neck, and the only sign of her shallow breaths is from where Yennefer feels the expansion of her chest against her own. Alive. 

She’s alive. But they are spent and vulnerable and alone. And portals are unsafe for the risk of being tracked, and Yennefer doesn’t think she even has the power for one in her own drained state.

And there has been enough magical noise that every magically-inclined creature within fifty miles will be drawn to this place. 

A faint shrill squeal behind her. She looks back over her shoulder towards the rubble of the gatehouse. 

The horses. 

She leaves Tissaia on the ground, hurrying as fast as she can towards the end of the bridge.

Tissaia’s mare is clearly dead - bright blood dripping from the animal's mouth, a faint frost on the body. But the gelding is still alive, trapped behind the crumble of the gate that separates the bridge from the keep. His high-pitched roaring pierces the quiet of the night when she approaches.

Pulling the saddlebags from the mare’s body, setting them aside, she sets to freeing the gelding from the tangle of rock around him with the least magic she can. Another spell to calm his terror, to settle him enough to walk over to where Tissaia is lying, to lift her up into the saddle - her own shoulder _aching_ with the movement. Yennefer uses the parapet to pull herself up behind the woman, sitting behind the cantle on the gelding’s broad back.

It has begun to sprinkle rain - the skies are grey with the thick cloud cover sliding across the sky towards them from the northeast.

Holding Tissaia tightly with an arm around her waist, Yennefer squeezes her legs, urging the gelding across the faintly glowing bridge and into the Northern kingdom of Brugge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One final chapter to come.


	5. The Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks again to Arwen (wordsbyarwen on Tumblr, troiing on AO3) for finding sections that weren't flowing well, for offering excellent commentary on objects I'd put in rooms that then vanished mysteriously over the course of a conversation, and for limiting my addiction to inappropriate punctuation.
> 
> If you've reading this for a while, you know this is the story that may never end, with the chapter count that increases with every update. Believe me, I *tried* to finish here, but there was a natural break.

Growzedd Velgo, proprietor of the sumptuous Merchant Guild’s inn on the road to Sodden, the crown jewel in a series of lodging for the discerning south-bound traveller, is asleep in his bed, ignorant of the rainstorm raging outside the walls of the inn or of the lightning that had flashed miles to the south at midnight. 

His pleasant dreams of cavorting with lushly-proportioned and very friendly milkmaids at Beltane are broken by a loud crashing sound suspiciously similar to the splitting of a wood door, and he awakens with a cry. Reaching blindly for the wooden cudgel he keeps under the bed, Growzedd jumps out of bed and sprints off down the hall to defend his inn from whatever evil has fallen upon it. He arrives in the parlour, brandishing his weapon in one hand and a hastily-lit candle in the other, only to come to an abrupt halt when he sees the cause of the noise.

The intruders are not a mass of vicious bandits ready to raze the building to the ground and kill all that dwell inside, but instead a pair of women wearing fine dresses and fur-lined cloaks. They are soaked to the skin, dripping water on the beautiful silk rug he'd imported from Zerrikania the previous year at great expense. 

(The source of the crashing sound is solved - the ruins of the beautifully balanced front door lie on the ground beyond them, the thick oak boards split right down the center, both steel hinges torn from the frame. Growzedd can only stare mutely, his mouth opening and closing, as his brain attempts to make sense of the scene.) 

‘A room, quickly!’ The taller one shouts when she spots him. ‘And care for the horse outside!’

Her long hair is plastered to her head like someone drowned, the hood of her black cloak thrown back over her narrow shoulders. The other woman - shorter and smaller - is standing upright only by virtue of the arm slung around her waist. There is fresh blood dripping from her nose and her eyes are closed. She looks pale even in the faint light cast by his guttering candle.

The floorboards creak behind him, more lights appearing around them. The rest of the inn’s staff have arrived, awakened by the noise, some with candles of their own. 

Emboldened by the presence of more people, Growzedd finally finds his voice. 

‘Now see here!’ he blusters, adjusting his nightcap with the hand holding the cudgel, gesturing with the candle. ‘Only _approved_ guests may stay here, and since you’re obviously not of the Merchant’s Guild, you can just leave the way you came.’ 

A creak and then a crash, as one of the halves of the broken door falls off the ruined hinges.

‘And you’ll pay for that door too, good woman, or I’ll have the constabulary lock you up for trespassing!’

There is a beat as she stares back at him without expression.

There is the sound of rushing air and the parlour is suddenly illuminated in bright light and heat. The occupants of the parlour recoil to the walls with cries of fear, shielding their eyes from the cabbage-sized orb of fire that has flared into blazing existence over the woman’s outstretched palm.

The _sorceress_ \- he realizes how horribly wrong he was in his first assessment - is staring at Growzedd with deadly intent, her violet eyes burning brighter than the ball of fire crackling in her hand.

'Your best room,’ she says coldly, ‘Or you shall discover the difficulty of serving your precious patrons when this belovedly _exclusive_ building is a smoking pile of coals and your corpse a wet smear of flesh beside it.'

\---

Yennefer’s instructions to the staff are brief, and she finishes with a pointed threat of terrible retribution towards anyone who breathes a word of their presence here. The threat is unnecessary - it's clear she's terrified them all with the fire - and there is an instantaneous whirlwind of activity as the dozen household servants all rush in different directions to a rapid series of commands barked out by a woman in a yellow nightgown, her grey hair bundled up in a kerchief. 

The innkeeper doesn't protest the loss of control. He’s sitting down in a chair in the corner and has the dazed expression of someone who has been kicked in the head by a mule. 

Tissaia is a silent weight on her side, the sodden clothing clinging to her icy skin. Near freezing herself, her limbs stiff with cold, Yennefer lets one of the men pick up Tissaia in his arms and follows them up the stairs after the kerchief-woman with the keys. She pauses only long enough to assure herself that a groom has been dispatched to care for the gelding. She’d pushed him for two hours to get to the inn - the closest building north of the bridge - and even dismounting for the final miles and walking, she hadn’t been sure the horse would survive. 

And Yennefer, despite having grown up in a place where animals are for food, not forming attachments to, has developed a lingering fondness for the gelding.

The room they are shown to is on the second floor, obviously reserved for only the wealthiest of guests. There is a large fireplace to the left of the door that is already being stoked into fresh life by a scared-looking maid with shaking hands, with more split wood stacked nearby to feed it. The wide bed to the right of the door has a canopy with drawn curtains, an excess of feather pillows and a well-stuffed down comforter. Narrow glass windows line the wall beyond the bed and a spacious bathing area is directly opposite the door. 

Yennefer has the man carrying Tissaia go directly into the bathing area, instructing him to set her down next to the water. The tub is ceramic tiled and generously-sized - a gnomish design for continued self-heating with a fire underneath. It is being filled by two sturdy men hauling in buckets as fast as they can, another servant hurriedly stoking the fire in the room that will keep the large tub heated through a clever arrangement of pipes. Fresh linens and towels are stacked nearby, and there are lit candles scattered around the room, with beaten metal reflectors behind them to increase the amount of light.

The first order of business is getting Tissaia warm - it’s clear that the woman’s core temperature is dangerously cold from an hours-long ride in the rainstorm. Her skin feels like ice to the touch and the borders of her thin lips are bluish in the candlelight.

Heedless of the company around them, Yennefer sets to work stripping the woman of her wet clothing. The cloak is easy enough to unfasten from her throat, but the buttons on the front of Tissaia's dress are too fiddly to undo with numb fingers and Yennefer gives up after fumbling to free the second. Reaching for Tissaia’s dagger that she had tossed down on the tiles, she rips through the ruined bodice and the silk shift underneath, only to be greeted by a wash of red stains on pale fabric and the metallic smell of fresh blood. 

Yennefer grimaces as she sees the mess that the magically-ruptured keystone inflicted on Tissaia’s chest - slices and cuts scattered haphazardly across her skin, including a nasty wound to her left shoulder that looks to still have a stone fragment embedded in it.

As she is bared by Yennefer’s hands, Tissaia curls in on herself like some creature deprived of its protective outer shell. Her breath comes in short hisses, her eyes squeezed shut, shivering uncontrollably. 

Getting Tissaia into the nearby bath proves a challenge as the woman has no strength to stand, and the servants had fled the room as soon as the heating was established, obviously wary of being in the general vicinity of a sorceress. Deciding that the injuries can wait for the moment, Yennefer picks up Tissaia in her arms and steps shakily into the tub to deposit her in the warming water. She’s just as light as she looks, but the dead weight of weakness makes her an ungainly load, and Yennefer almost falls sideways when she sets her down, earning herself a faceful of water. 

When she is finally reassured that Tissaia isn’t going to sink under the surface and drown on her, Yennefer climbs out of the tub, discards her own sodden cloak on the pile of ruined clothing on the floor, and moves back to the other room to fetch supplies to clean Tissaia’s wounds. 

Yennefer finds what she is looking for - a small jar of ointment buried in the deepest part of her saddlebags. The door to the rooms creaks open as she is closing up her kit, and two servants move in quietly, carrying several trays and a pitcher. They are silent as they place the meal down near the fire and hurry away out the door without a glance at her. 

Obviously the inn is accustomed to creating meals on short notice for unexpected visitors because, on investigation, the food is blessedly warm - even if it isn’t newly cooked. A leg of lamb coated with rich spices, a platter of roasted parsnip and pumpkin with fresh butter. There are also several ripe pears, and thin slices of dark nut bread topped with honeycomb and crumbling goat cheese. 

A pitcher of mulled wine completes the meal, fragrant steam rising from the pitcher and Yennefer pours some into a goblet. She takes a tentative sip and feels her body warm as the sweet liquid moves down into her stomach. Topping it off, she returns to the bathing room, goblet in hand.

Tissaia is sitting in the bath, hunched forward with her arms around her knees, her scapula stretched, showing the narrow line of her spine. Yennefer can see her body trembling from five paces away. Her eyes flicker open only for a second before shutting again, a pained expression on her face. 

Walking around to the opposite edge of the bath, Yennefer kneels and slips her fingers below the surface. She carefully channels magic through her hand, raising the temperature of the water faster than the fire burning underneath is able, watching Tissaia’s face for any hint of discomfort. The smell of the bathing salts becomes more intense - a complex aroma of citrus and cloves not unlike the mulled wine she’s set down next to Tissaia.

Tissaia closes her eyes and sinks just a bit deeper into the tub, until the water is level with her lips.

Pleased that she still has some control over her magic - even if casting spells feels like trying to fill a basin with a thimble, Yennefer stands up and peels off the soaked shift clinging to her skin, leaving her naked. She steps into the bath and crouches down beside Tissaia, the warm water just brushing the bottom of her breasts.

‘Drink,' she murmurs, holding the goblet gently to Tissaia’s mouth. It’s tricky, and some of it spills out one side, but she quickly finds the best angle, and watches Tissaia’s throat move as she takes a few sips. 

When Tissaia has finished the wine, Yennefer sets to work with the washcloth. Tissaia’s nose has stopped bleeding but there are still cuts to her chin and cheekbone, the latter extending almost to her left ear. Tissaia's torso seems to have borne the worst of the blast, the shrapnel slicing through her clothing like parchment paper. White marble fragments are visible in her skin, scattered across her breasts and sternum. Most of these are easily brushed out with the soft cloth, but there is a piece embedded in her left shoulder so deep that Yennefer is unable to free it with her fingers. 

After heating the blade of Tissaia’s dagger in the fire below the tub to sterilize it, Yennefer sets to picking out the buried fragment with the tip. Tissaia bears the excavation in her shoulder soundlessly, but her eyes are squeezed shut, a crease forming between her brows, her mouth set in a thin line. She inhales sharply when Yennefer finally gets deep enough to free the stone with her fingers. The fragment she retrieves is as long as her thumb, and the fresh flush of blood that flows from the hole it leaves in her shoulder is alarming. 

This is the only wound that Yennefer allows herself to heal - starting the granulation process, helping the wound close from the bottom up. She has only a small amount to give now, and she has already seen the state of Tissaia’s hands when she’d undressed her.

Silently, Yennefer eases Tissaia’s arms away from where she’s clutching around her own knees. While Tissaia's deerskin gloves had saved her from shrapnel, the tips of her fingers are hard and waxy past the margin of the nail beds. Frostbite is easy enough to fix, but this is no ordinary cold, and Yennefer takes great care to feel out the injury, picking out the spots of damage. Concentrating on blood vessels finer than silken thread, willing the cells to repair and warm, she watches as the colour slowly returns to Tissaia's fingers. The second healing leaves her dizzy, and she needs to pause to steady herself with an arm on the side of the tub until it passes. When she checks the capillary refill she finds it sluggish still, but it can be attributed to the fact that she’s still cold. If Tissaia's fortunate, there won’t be any lasting damage to her sense of touch. 

After moving her hands down Tissaia’s belly, skimming the skin over her thighs for any bumps or points of pain that might show on the woman’s face, Yennefer is satisfied that she’s found all of her injuries. She leaves Tissaia to warm in the water and turns to bathing herself. 

Yennefer’s own injuries are few. Her lower lip is split - she doesn’t remember the cause - and there’s congealed blood at the back of her scalp, although there are no open wounds that she can feel. Purpling bruises are scattered across her hips, elbows and knees - undoubtedly from landing on the hard stone of the bridge twice, and there is a lingering stiffness that has set into her back that feels suspiciously like the ever-present ache of her curved spine before her Enchantment. The worst is the patch of skin torn from her shoulder when she’d pushed Tissaia out of the circle, the grit-filled abrasion almost a hand span in length. Her discarded dress has a hole in the sleeve of identical size. 

Yennefer is warmer after twenty minutes in the bath, and even Tissaia’s shivering has lessened. Getting Tissaia out of the tub is a little easier than getting her into it, but it is telling of the woman’s fatigue that she does not cover herself as she stands up, shaky as a new-born foal. She has gooseflesh, the near-invisible hairs on her arms standing upright, and her nipples are erect, still clearly cold despite the water's warmth. Yennefer's plan to put on her own robe is immediately revised when she sees how unsteady Tissaia’s legs are, and she wraps a towel around the woman’s body instead, before guiding her in an ungainly walk towards the now-roaring fire in the bedroom.

When Tissaia’s settled on the rug in front of the hearth, her skin towelled dry and a robe eased onto her body, Yennefer moves to the side table. She places some of the food brought up onto a plate, pouring another goblet of wine and setting it down beside her.

When she returns from dressing in her own robe, doing up the thin fabric belt around her waist, Tissaia is sitting so close to the fire that Yennefer worries that she'll be burnt from the heat radiating over the grate. The food is untouched.

Yennefer picks up the wooden jar with a waxed seal from her bag and moves towards the fire.

‘Ointment for your injuries,’ she says as she settles on the rug. Heat from the fireplace is radiating against her right side, flushing her face, an odd sensation given how cold she has been for the last four hours.

Tissaia, swaying slightly, eyes half-closed, gives a faint nod. The neck of her gown - much too large for her small frame - already hangs open, revealing the surprisingly long line of her neck down to the swell of her breasts. Her dark hair is wet and in a loose disarray, fallen from where it was pinned up. Yennefer pulls out the rest of the pins until her long braid hangs freely and wrings the water from it using the towel. Shorter strands hang loosely from her temples, curled slightly by the damp, and she smooths them back behind Tissaia's ears to better see the wounds to her face.

(If Yennefer’s touch lingers a few moments longer than necessary, it could be dismissed as a closer examination of the narrow slice that extends across Tissaia’s cheek.)

The sound of rain outside, dripping in rivulets down the roof, is steady. The moon is hidden, and the room is dark save for the faint light from the candles near the bed and the glow of the fire in front of them.

Sitting with one knee behind Tissaia’s back, the other leg folded underneath her, Yennefer breaks the seal on the wooden jar; the fragrance of the aromatic ointment immediately fills the air. Made of lemon verbena, propolis, and pennywort, the ointment has a pleasant scent, and has proven an effective remedy for most wounds she’s treated in the past. She applies the paste to the worst of the wounds, dabbing it onto the cuts on Tissaia’s chin and cheekbone with careful fingers. Then, easing the sides of her robe apart to reveal the skin underneath, she tends to the freshly-cleaned lacerations on Tissaia’s chest, all the more visible in the firelight.

Tissaia begins to drift off as Yennefer finishes the dressing to her shoulder - the puncture already showing a week’s worth of healing from her magic. The woman is quiet in her slumber - her breathing soft and near inaudible - and if Yennefer couldn't see the slow rise and fall of Tissaia's chest in the glow of the fire, couldn’t feel the slide of her breathing against her body, it would be easy enough to wonder whether the woman were alive at all. 

Yennefer forces herself to eat from the plate of untouched food - knowing she needs the energy, even if she has no appetite. Tissaia's leaning heavily on Yennefer’s left side, quietly drowsing, and Yennefer eats with one hand so as not to disturb her. 

After draining the last of the wine in the goblet, she carefully rouses Tissaia enough to move her to the bed, easing her under the covers.

Satisfied that Tissaia is not in immediate danger of dying from cold or from an unknown injury, Yennefer seals the door with a protective charm and places another log on the fire. She slips into the window-side of the bed, blowing out the candle that is flickering faint light. The mattress is large enough that there is still some distance between her and Tissaia, and as she slides into the cool sheets, pulling the down comforter over her, she lets out a breath.

The minutes creep by; the raindrops run down the outside of the panes of glass on Yennefer’s side of the bed. A piece of wood pops in the fire, the logs shifting in the hearth. 

No longer actively occupied with immediate survival, Yennefer's mind wanders.

(The ship in the darkness, the ice-covered hull, the bone-chilling wind. The insidious whispers that had promised power, urging her closer and closer until she was almost directly under the split in the sky.)

(The panic and terror she had felt underneath the gaping chasm of a portal, watching Tissaia’s body bent backwards by the magic stolen from her.)

(Riding with Tissaia unconscious in her arms, the wet hood rippling around her neck, sheets of rain stinging her face in the cold, her magic too spent to channel a portal, not knowing if the horse would survive long enough to carry them to the faint memory of an inn seven miles north of the bridge in Brugge.)

She is bone-tired, but even in her exhaustion she cannot find rest.

Yennefer can feel Tissaia trembling beside her, the light of the fire showing that she is curled into a fetal position, arms tightly tucked to her chest. Even if her skin is warmer now than before, it is obvious the woman is still chilled at her core.

And whatever secrets Tissaia has kept from her, the woman looks wretchedly alone right now. 

Yennefer shifts across the mattress until she is lying against Tissaia’s back. She reaches out and slides her right hand under the fabric of her robe until her palm is cupped around the natural curve of Tissaia’s ribs below her axilla. Closing her eyes in concentration, Yennefer allows the scant magic she has left to seep into Tissaia's chest through her hand, careful not to push too much in at once. 

As warmth flows into the heart that beats beneath her hand, she feels the woman begin to relax. Tissaia's breathing slows as the minutes pass, and her shivering stills, signalling a deeper sleep. She’s settled into an echo of Yennefer's position - her back against her breasts, hips against pelvis. 

She’s reminded of their dance a week ago, their bodies moving together in parallel.

(She should have known it was her.)

Yennefer cradles Tissaia's small frame with her body, feeling possessive and tender in a way she never has before. She’s unaccustomed to holding someone, unfamiliar with physical closeness like this, even after a night of pleasure. Her partnerships are short-lived and fire-bright - what else could be expected from someone who had been rejected by even the most desperate of village boys when she had been barely into womanhood? To contemplate a relationship of any length, one that didn’t serve some purpose or other in pursuit of a goal, was laughable. 

But now? Holding someone in her arms? Wanted and needed?

Wisps of soft hair tickle her nose as she presses her face into the nape of the woman's neck, their bodies flush together. The raised line of Tissaia’s spine is hard against Yennefer's sternum but the ache in Yennefer's chest is not a physical one. 

Tissaia brings out too many feelings in Yennefer, few of them pleasant ones. The sorceress has known Yennefer longer than anyone else left in her life (Istredd - the betrayer; her mother - long-gone; siblings - forgotten). The deep-seated hurt that Tissaia has inflicted on her is firmly in place, and she doubts that anything could ever change that resentment. 

(She could have abandoned her at the bridge. The woman wouldn't have been able to save herself - not when she was drained of her magic.)

But she can't help but think of all the small moments over the last handful of days. The warm cloak that had been carefully placed over her body that cold night in Mahakam. The touch to her arm in the inn in Kagen. The press of Tissaia's soft lips against her own in their ploy to gain access to what turned out to be an audience with Calanthe.

Tissaia had _needed_ her. And there is a satisfaction in that significance of self, because Yennefer has always desired to be wanted for her own worth, not for the magic she wields. 

The change from the sorceress who had pulled out countless bolts of lightning from a clear night sky to the kitten-weak woman now curled in her arms is frightening. She could never have imagined the woman as vulnerable as she is now. But Tissaia's heart is beating a reassuring rhythm under her palm. She is _alive_.

Yennefer knows in her heart that at this moment she never wants to let go of her. 

(She’s not alone.) 

For one perfect moment in time, however brief it may be, Yennefer is content.

—

Yennefer wakes to the liquid song of a thrush outside the window and bright daylight shining on her side of the bed, warming the blankets over her legs. She blinks sleepily, staring up at the white plaster of the ceiling, gradually sorting out where she is. It’s early afternoon from the height of the sun in the sky, the beams filtered by the leaves of the tree outside. 

Tissaia has shifted in the night, and her breath is a whisper against the side of Yennefer’s neck. The press of soft breasts into her own, a chin resting on her clavicle, a weight on the left side of her chest. Arms tucked between their intertwined bodies, Yennefer’s own fingers resting on the rounded ridge of a pelvic crest. Tissaia's skin is now reassuringly warm to the touch, and carries the faint scent of soap and lemon verbena from the ointment. 

Tissaia's dark hair is uncharacteristically haphazard, one lock covering her face. Yennefer tamps down the impulse to smooth it back with her fingers, to return the woman to the familiar figure she knows instead of a sleeping stranger.

In what might be excused as exhaustion, Yennefer allows herself some time to enjoy the easy comfort of a warm bed, the closeness of another body to her own.

Time stretches, and eventually Yennefer is awake enough to notice that the hearth is cold, and the plates of food are still on the table. Obviously her warning about being disturbed had been a little too forceful. She shifts, easing herself away, and then winces as her hair is pulled with the movement, still caught under Tissaia’s shoulder. The woman’s lips thin briefly as Yennefer frees herself, but she does not stir.

Yennefer rises to sit and grimaces when the movement brings an ache to her sides and a sharp sting to her upper back. She stretches and turns to either side, feeling her muscles on either side of her spine pull to the point of pain and then release.

The air in the room is too cool to be comfortable outside of the warm bed. She pads on bare feet across the cold floor to start the fire back from ashes, stacking wood inside the hearth and encouraging it into crackling flames with a single word. It’s a skill she’s had since childhood - as the eldest child in the family, she’d wake up first each morning to start the fire. 

When she straightens up from the merrily crackling fire and turns around, she sees that Tissaia is awake.

The thrush calls again outside the window, the burbling of water in its song.

‘We’re eight miles north of the bridge,’ Yennefer announces unprompted. ‘At a guild inn. I emphasized the importance of silence to those who live here - we should be safe.’.

Tissaia shifts on the mattress, pushing herself up on one hand to move further up, her face tightening at the clear pain this motion brings. The comforter spills off her body, pulling the neck of her gown open. The garment is too large for her, and one of the sides opens up, uncovering the woman's pale breast until she pulls it closed.

‘I recall.’ There is a hoarseness to Tissaia’s voice - residual, perhaps, from the screams that had been torn from her body the previous night

Yennefer frowns, walking closer to the bed. 

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks, tilting up the woman’s chin with a touch. The wound to her cheek is dry - the ointment placed on it during the night has rubbed away. 

The corners of Tissaia’s mouth curve up incrementally. The expression pulls on the cut, and she winces.

‘Alive.’

Yennefer picks up the wooden container from the bed stand and begins reapplying it to the reddened cut with her fingers, balancing on the edge of the mattress. Tissaia bears her ministrations without a sound, her only movement being to turn her face slightly towards the window, giving her more light to see.

‘Your magic?’ Yennefer asks as she moves to the slice that curves from the faint cleft in her chin to the underside of her neck.

Dark lashes flutter.

‘I’d have enough strength for a single portal, but nothing more.’

‘And your precious bridge?’ Yennefer murmurs as she applies the last of the ointment to the cut to her brow. 'I trust your spells worked and our journey has finally ended?’

Another bird calls outside. The yellow leaves of the aspen beyond the window shake in the breeze, shifting shadows over the bed’s covers. 

Tissaia searches Yennefer’s face with careful eyes. 

'Everything ends, Yennefer,’ she says quietly. She moves to run her hand over her temple, feels the ointment there and pauses the path of her fingers. ‘The spell of protection took this time, thankfully.'

Yennefer is not satisfied with this. 

‘And yet you nearly _failed_ ,’ she says, standing up, striding over to the table to push the wooden jar back into her bags with more force than necessary. ‘You, who measure everything to the exact weight necessary, be it magical or mundane. Why did you not have enough power to stop the keystone from shattering? Surely it can't have been from a lack of _control_?’

Tissaia closes her eyes and she does not speak for a long moment.

‘It was necessary to use magic earlier that same day. A gamble to save a single life and with it a kingdom.’

Yennefer’s eyes widen. She hadn’t been certain until now. 

She thought she’d felt _something_ while Tissaia had held a hand over the girl in Calanthe’s arms, but, distracted by her own heightened alertness after the public demonstration with Tissaia, had brushed it off as a byproduct of whatever sensing the woman had been using. 

‘You used your magic back at the manor, with Calanthe’s child,’ she says slowly, her eyebrows knitting together as she stares at Tissaia. ‘What did you do to the girl?’ 

‘I drove the seed of chaos that lay in the child’s body deep down to where it will never take root.’

Yennefer’s face twists into a scowl. ‘So, another girl's life altered for your purposes, never given the choice of what she might want.'

‘Choice?’ Tissaia says, moving herself up so that she is fully sitting, her expression twisting into a pained grimace when she tries to push using her injured left arm. 'What _choice_ is there to inflict uncontrolled chaos on a kingdom that does not trust it and a mother who does not understand it? Calanthe would never let her daughter go to Aretuza and the girl would soon be dead from a lack of guidance, leaving no heir for the throne of Cintra. How many would die in that succession, I wonder? Thousands? Tens of thousands? What would happen to the Northern Kingdoms when a weakened Cintra fell?’

‘You cannot…’ Yennefer begins angrily, but Tissaia's voice rises to drown her out.

'There is a connection with the Cintran royal line dating back to Lara Dorren that carries magic of indescribable power. I had to be certain that it was not the girl. And I did the same to Calanthe when she was a child - her mother sensed that burying her magic was the only safe thing for her daughter, already impulsive and headstrong even at that age.’ 

Tissaia shakes her head, shifting on the pillows. ‘Believe me, Yennefer, I have been watching Cintra’s royal line for generations, ever since being summoned to test the child left behind by Falka; I am not new to the game. And as for the spell, I had no way of knowing how much power would be needed. It became a moot point once the surge was sent back through the stone.’

Yennefer’s eyes narrow. ‘Who taught you the enchantment? Certainly no mage trained at Aretuza, since I only recognized some of the casting motions, and none of the spells used to bind it together.’

‘An elven sage in the Blue Mountains, who did not wish to welcome her kinsmen back to this world with open arms.’ Tissaia hesitates, and then moves forward in bed. ‘I would teach you that magic if you’d let me, Yennefer - there will be a need to renew the enchantment in the distant future.’

Yennefer stares at her. ‘You cannot possibly think I would want that responsibility,’ she says incredulously. ‘You of _all_ people, Tissaia, have some inkling of what I feel for the Brotherhood and their meddling.’

‘It was not the Brotherhood’s direction that brought me here, Yennefer; I acted on my own, including seeking out your help for this journey.’

There is silence as they look at each other from across the room. The fire crackles behind the grate, the dry wood snapping in the heat. 

‘I could have the Brotherhood pull you out of Aedirn - if that was what you wished.' Tissaia says quietly, her blue eyes searching Yennefer’s. ‘Your time at court will come to an end if you do not find a way to meet Virfuril’s need for an heir.’

'And obey _your_ every command?’ Yennefer says bitterly. ‘Following you blindly around the Continent, surviving on morsels that you deign to give me when the time suits you, and gentle praise when I do a good job?'

It is easy to see - Tissaia's pet sorceress, at her beck and call, treated like one of Virfuril's prized hounds. Coddled and controlled.

Yennefer will not allow herself to be harnessed in that way. 

That very defiance had saved them both last night.

(In her mind's eye Yennefer can still see that ghostly ship floating in the void, triangular white sails billowing in the icy air. She will never be able to forget the chilling whispers compelling her to walk closer to inevitable doom; the empty feeling, her magic drained to power the passage of the ship into this world; the sight of Tissaia’s body, rigid and spent and so very close to death.) 

‘You didn’t tell me that your plan involved facing down the Wild Hunt,’ she says, moving closer towards the woman sitting stiffly in the bed. ‘Not even a warning beyond a stray mention of their existence back in Mahakam.’

Tissaia's neutral expression is unreadable. ‘I did not count on an Aen Elle mage attempting to break the barrier.’

‘How could you not?’ Yennefer spits out. ‘Was the purpose of your enchantment not to stop that very thing from happening, Tissaia? For all your talk about continental harmony, you seemed to have neglected to include the information about the bridge being the site of a portal between _worlds_!'

Tissaia does not answer. Her level gaze is set on Yennefer, her hands folded in front of her.

‘Your preoccupation with ‘ _what ifs_ ’ and the future of the Continent follows a narrow path indeed,' Yennefer continues through clenched teeth. 'What if they had broken through? Or if your magic had been spent and you had been disintegrated in the enchantment?'

Yennefer hates that her voice cracks on these words. She wants to seize Tissaia by the arms and shake her. 

(Tissaia, in a too-large gown, her angular face bare of any pigment, stark and beautiful, so very vulnerable, so willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good.)

Her insides feel as they had back all those decades ago in the tower of Tor Lara, the frantic energy contained in her fragile body tight and wild and ready to shatter. A faint echo of what Tissaia must have been carrying with her for almost a year. 

Yennefer feels just as brittle now as she did that night.

The thought of the constant, infuriating presence of the woman who has so neatly cut her life into sections, _vanishing_? 

(She should be glad at the thought, Yennefer thinks. What has Tissaia ever done for her that Yennefer had not won for herself? Aedirn has been her own doing, after all - no thanks to Tissaia or the Brotherhood, who would have foisted her off on Nilfgaard, dooming her to rot in a backwater nation thousands of miles away.) 

Tissaia's callous cruelty at Aretuza alone should be enough to make Yennefer glad of such a fate befalling her.

But despite this, she had saved her twice last night, from magic and from the cold, and it had not only been because Yennefer had wanted answers.

‘You didn’t trust me with any information of importance,’ she continues, shaking her head slowly. ‘The cave in Mahakam and the keystone, Calanthe’s child, the Wild Hunt? All things I learned too late. Why bring me along if I was only to be a witness? You could not have thought of a better lesson of why I _shouldn’t_ leave Aedirn.’

Tissaia watches her silently from the bed. When she does speak, it is obvious she is choosing her words carefully.

'If I did not share everything with you on our travels, Yennefer, it was because I gave you what I could. I was unsure whether I would find the keystone intact or even the cave itself, I did not know if Calanthe would come with her child, and I did not expect the Aen Elle to break through, or I certainly would have asked for your help with the spell in the first place.’

Yennefer’s choked laugh is disbelieving, and she reaches down to pick up another split piece of wood to toss on the fire.

‘And as for the girl -,’ Tissaia’s voice is more hoarse, the effort of talking clearly straining it. ‘- Portents from Skellige’s soothsayers, hedge witches looking through entrails, all of these things _add up_. Everything I have seen over the last ten years points towards the return of the Elder blood, centered in Cintra. I was certain that it was Calanthe's child that might be a Source, but since it is clearly not, then perhaps her grandchild will fulfill Ithlinne’s prophecy.’ 

She hears Tissaia stand up behind her and feels her approaching the fire.

‘That time is _coming_ , Yennefer, and if I were to die, then who else do I trust to be strong enough to take up this responsibility of watching the world?'

Yennefer rounds on her with flashing eyes.

‘Do not speak to me of trust when you have done nothing to earn it, Tissaia!’ she spits out, shrugging away the hand that had alighted on her shoulder. ‘I have suffered your instruction enough in this lifetime - I shall not _shackle_ myself to your pet cause!’

Tissaia’s nostrils flare, her sharp chin rising up. 'Do not think only of your comforts in Aedirn or your own selfish desires - there is a _price_ to our abilities! Without the supervision of mages like us, the Continent would erupt into civil war that would consume everyone living on it. The responsibility we have as magic users is maintaining balance in the world.'

 _Like us._

Yennefer is so angry she could strike her.

‘Oh yes, the _ever-selfless_ Tissaia de Vries,' she sneers. 'Looking out for the common men, women, and children that live in poverty in hovels in the dirt. Able to set aside her safety - ignoring the murder attempt by another mage - just so a handful of villagers might survive. Tirelessly moulding a new generation of sorceresses, even the imperfect cripple with the taint of elven blood, fished out of a pig pen for a few coins. Perhaps you thought I'd be falling over myself in thanks, eager to bow to your every request?' 

'Use your head!’ Tissaia clicks her tongue in a sound of frustration. ‘Our duty is not only to kings, but to the ordinary folk also - the ones who sacrifice flesh and blood for the carelessness of those above them. _Those_ are the ones who will suffer if we do not set aside our differences. The elves of Dol Blathanna, those that were driven out when Aedirn coveted their land - you have a chance to help those people if only you could look beyond your pride...’

‘It always comes back to your guilt, doesn’t it, Tissaia?’ Yennefer cuts in with a hollow-sounding laugh. ‘You could not prevent the slaughter of the elves so you feel obligated to carry on their burdens even now, even if it means nearly _killing_ yourself through casting a spell that ten ordinary mages would struggle with.’ 

She turns back to her belongings, shoving her still-wet cloak into the satchel. ‘And spare me your nobility - there is _nothing_ you wouldn’t do if it meant saving your precious magical stronghold.'

‘I would give everything to save our world from being destroyed.’

Yennefer snorts, latching the saddlebags shut, glancing over her shoulder back at the woman. 'Then you are a _fool_ if you are gullible enough to believe other mages would blindly set aside their personal ties in favour of loyalty to magic or your Chapter’s direction.’

‘And you have not grown at all, girl.’ Tissaia says icily, her clear gaze fixed on Yennefer’s own. ‘Still as hungry for power as you ever were, heedless of what or whom you might consume on that path. I meant for you to be destined for better, Yennefer - to want more than to settle for that life of easy comfort.’ 

'More talk of purpose and destiny, structure and sacrifice - all convenient excuses to serve your own aims. Do you truly care for anything other than your classes and causes, Rectoress?'

They stare at each other from either side of the fireplace. Yennefer has her bags slung over one arm, the belt of her gown almost slipped from her waist. Tissaia, back straight, hands curled into white-knuckled fists, chin held up, proud to the last.

'I have found my purpose, Yennefer,’ Tissaia says quietly, and there is a faint hint of regret in her expression. ‘Can you say the same? Are you so certain of what you need from this world?'

'I know I need nothing from _you_.’ Yennefer says coldly.

And throwing her arm out, she pulls a portal to Aedirn into existence in the middle of the room and steps through in the same breath, shutting it behind her.


	6. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re here. No more after this so settle in, and enjoy your 11k chapter. Thank troiings from saving you from semi-colons - she's been a wonderful editor for the last three chapters and you need to go read her fics if you haven't already.

Despite the dangers Yennefer has faced in her week of travels with Tissaia, it is her wrathful return to Aedirn that nearly kills her in the end. 

The portal she summons in a white-hot fury is so carelessly spun out of chaos that the terminus is vertically unstable. Yennefer strides blindly through the narrow slice in the air - away from Tissaia, away from her ideals and her nobility and stiff-necked implacability…

...only to find herself falling headfirst through the air at a dizzying speed, hurtling towards the stone floor of her quarters in Aedirn. 

It is only a frantic spell of shielding that saves her from breaking her neck when she hits the ground.

It takes her far too long to settle herself down and gather up enough scraps of magic from her already wrung-out body to concentrate on the healing of a newly sprained wrist, several broken ribs, and the fresh bruises along her right side to join the ones from the night before. She falls asleep immediately afterwards on top of the bed covers - too tired to even crawl under the blankets, and her rest is mercifully free of dreams. 

She wakes to the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones and the clear shouts of soldiers in the courtyard. The sun is barely up. Venturing out of her rooms to find the reason for the sudden mustering of Aedirn’s army, Yennefer finds that the servants pay her little heed as they rush around the halls. Stopping one of the maids, she learns that the royal couple are due to return the following day - Virfuril has had his fill of riding around the lands of his in-laws chasing after deer and boar.

(Her own absence from the castle has barely been noted it seems.)

Yennefer finally tracks down the steward, Fagin, to his small study above the kitchens. He doesn’t blink at her reappearance, or at the letter she hands him confirming that the Cintrans have agreed to the terms of trade with Aedirn - even though it is news that should be welcomed after a year of back-and-forth discussions. The source of his disquiet turns out to be another letter - received the previous evening by messenger. A local magistrate in Dol Blathanna had sent a missive requesting the urgent assistance of the army after a series of thefts of food and livestock from farms by a group of elves ending in an attack on a village where several barns had been burned to the ground. 

Wishing to stamp out any assistance to the thieves while the army set out to exterminate the raiders, Fagin had authorized an additional three hundred soldiers to sweep up all citizens with elvish blood working on farms within Dol Blathanna and forcibly relocate them to new communities on the western border of the kingdom. Any resistance to the move is to be met with swift punishment at the end of a rope.

‘The elves need to be taught a lesson -’ Fagin says in his reedy voice, leafing through a stack of accounts from the townships with bony fingers. He shakes his head. ‘Aedirn has been too kind to them, and to their kin, and they have squandered our good will for the last time with their ungracious, thieving ways. The King wishes for his lands and legacy to be preserved for his future sons - safe and fertile and unspoiled.’

Pushing away the clenching sensation she feels in her gut, Yennefer blocks thoughts of the doomed elves from her mind, sends out servants for supplies, and begins bottling fertility elixirs that same afternoon. 

(The selfish are easy to predict, and Yennefer will not give up her position in Aedirn without a fight.)

\--

Her potions are effective; Queen Kalis is with child by the end of the following month, and her endless chatter about trivial things turns exclusively to birthing and babies and babbling on about new gowns. News of a child has brightened the castle - feasts are planned and Virfuril begins seeking Yennefer’s council from time to time. 

The winter arrives in Aedirn, covering the fields and fertile valleys with a thick blanket of snow, and the year ends with the royal army marching all remaining elves and half-elves out of Dol Blathanna and moving them into three cramped mining camps near the border of Mahakam. 

Yennefer hears things, of course, back at the castle. Rumours that the sites of the new mines are chosen because they have no ore. Even if this is true, the people relocated are farmers, not miners, and with food rations tied to productivity and output of material, it is scarcely a month before the most northern of the mines erupts into rebellion, with twenty workers executed for insurrection. Camp rations are further cut in half for the following three months for all three camps as punishment - a necessary hardship, Virfuril announces, given the thefts that had occurred the previous harvest - even though the kingdom’s granaries are full to the point of bursting. 

Eighty more workers have died by the time spring arrives, malnutrition making the overcrowded camps easy prey to disease. In Vengerberg, Yennefer tells herself that she can do nothing to help. In a world where one must look out for themselves first and foremost, she will not risk her neck for a race with whom she shares nothing but the inconvenience of a common ancestor. This is merely the inevitable shift that comes with time - the rise of the young over the old. And what could one mage do against a king and an army anyway?

(She receives no letters from Tissaia.)

\---

It is summer - dry and bright and hot - when another royal wedding is announced. Vizimir, the young King of Redania, is due to be wed to the princess of Malleore in the capital city of Tregotor. Invitations are sent out to all the nobles of the Continent, and it is rumoured that nearly a thousand guests are expected. 

In the end, Yennefer attends the celebrations as the sole representative for Aedirn. Virfuril has chosen to stay at the side of his wife so as to welcome his new child, due to be born that very same evening. The one-eyed soothsayer he hired from Skellige in the winter promised that the stars had foretold this child would be a son and Virfuril is confident in the man’s word. 

Yennefer doesn’t object to attending the wedding on her own - she does not wish to be in Vengerberg when the child arrives. Hardened as her heart may be, there are some cruelties that still prick at Yennefer like knives, and whatever the constellations have said to a half-blind lunatic, there will not be a living newborn when Virfuril’s servants are finished with their orders from their master. 

(Kalis’s child _will_ be a girl, and Yennefer knows the bitterness of being unwanted all too well.) 

—

The cloudless sky is darkening by the time Yennefer arrives in Tregotor by portal, the sun setting behind the gently rolling hills to the west, the white walls of the castle gleaming in the half-light. The royal gardens are beautifully designed - arranged in concentric rings of stone walls and hedges, interspaced by the clean lines of ponds and elegant orchards of trees heavy with ripe fruits. Tonight the palace grounds have been decorated by colourful pennants and strings of glowing paper lanterns softly illuminating the spaces. Specks of light wink in and out across the fields beyond - the summer mating ritual of fireflies. 

Yennefer joins the line of arriving guests, dips a graceful curtsy as the herald announces her to the seated royal couple on the raised platform, and then begins her planned route of attack.

She makes her way over to the food tables, ignoring the pretentious display of delicacies in favour of watching the crowd for the most opportune moment to strike. Yennefer knows this game after so many years of playing it - and over the course of an hour of smiles, careful touches, and meaningful looks that are all feigned, she greets the delegates of Aedirn’s more notable trading partners, targets a few rising nobles for her personal charms, and flirts outrageously with the ambassador from Kovir over a discussion about purifying precious metals, because Virfuril would bend over backwards for a line of trade with the wealthiest kingdom in the world.

And then Yennefer plucks a fresh goblet of wine from the tray of a passing servant and slips away into the warm summer shadows. 

She wanders the garden paths until she finds a bench in an alcove mostly hidden from the crowds by a tall hedge of cream-coloured roses. It’s a glorious floral display, and the surrounding space is richly fragrant with the warm scent of myrrh and fruit from the blooms. Yennefer sits down, breathing in this quiet space in the chaos of the surrounding guests - looking out across the raised border of the large pond towards the central dais where the evening’s entertainment will be held.

The only other sign of life is the small school of orange goldfish fluttering at the surface of the water, mouths opening and closing, ever-hopeful of food from above. 

Yennefer nurses her goblet as the deepening dusk stretches out into the velvet softness of night, staring across the water at the shifting crowd until twelve men and women in white robes move out onto the stage in the center of the gardens. The night begins to ring with the clear sound of song as they cast their voices up towards the stars and the hidden moon in a beautifully haunting harmony. As the lilting Old Elder echoes off the raised marble walls, the guests shift towards the central dais, finding seats on the benches and chairs on the grass, brightly garbed servants weaving through the crowds with pastries and savoury delicacies and the finest of wines.

But Yennefer’s attention is narrowed on another sound. 

There are twenty or so mages here tonight, and she can feel the sparks of their natural magic surrounding her just like the winking of the fireflies. Yennefer’s dimmed her own magic enough that she knows she’s unlikely to be noticed, and - confident that her spells will keep her concealed - her right hand is lightly touching the obsidian star at her throat. The diamonds glitter as she channels through the amulet, opening up her hearing to pluck out a specific conversation happening in her direct line of sight fifty or so paces away on the other side of the pond.

‘...and you, Tissaia. Does the music match your remembrances of the fine voices of the Aen Sidh?’

Tissaia’s distinctively slight form is impossible to miss even in a crowd of hundreds. She’s sitting, straight-backed, on a wooden chair, a crystal flute of wine held delicately in one hand. Her dark hair is drawn into a smooth arrangement and held up with gilded leaves. The neckline of her midnight blue gown is invitingly open and Yennefer can see the dull lustre of a gold pendant just visible above the woman’s pale breastbone - marking her return to the position of Rectoress of Aretuza. 

She’s not alone, either. There are three other members of the Chapter sitting with her, all of whom Yennefer recognizes, all dressed in equally fine clothing. A bald and bearded wizard with a pleasant face is beside her, wearing green robes of an anachronistic cut. Hen Gedymdeith’s presence here is remarkable enough, the oldest of the living mages attends few if any social occasions, preferring to spend his days on research. Beyond him sits the diminutive bulk of Artaud Terranova, his feet barely touching the grass, one fist full of stuffed olives, the other clutching a newly-filled goblet of wine. 

And Stregobor is on the chair furthest away, next to the arching branches of a fig tree, cloaked in purple and black velvet. 

‘In the same manner that an echo is of an original voice, Hen Gedymdeith.’ Tissaia’s smooth voice rises through Yennefer’s listening charm. ‘It has been almost a century now and I…’

Yennefer does not hear the rest of Tissaia’s reply as two giggling guests pass between them in pursuit of a servant carrying a tray heavily laden with fresh oysters. The spike of mindless chatter about the dress that a rival is wearing is so loud that Yennefer winces and releases her pendant. When she is able to center her hearing again, it is Terranova who is speaking.

‘...One of the few things they left with us beyond abandoned palaces and the part-bred progeny spread around the land,’ he chuckles, popping another of the stuffed olives into his open mouth. He continues to speak while chewing. ‘What use is music and dancing against the might of fire and steel? It is the time of men now. Long gone are the days of sending our mages to the elven courts and _good riddance_ say I. Why waste our resources for the sake of tradition?’

‘The Rectoress’ preference for returning young mages to their places of origin is well known.’ Stregobor drawls, leaning closer to Terranova and smiling faintly across at Tissaia. ‘Stemming from your own personal experience, is that not correct, Tissaia?’ 

Tissaia’s narrow shoulders remain relaxed, but her tight-lipped smile is chilling. Her eyes remain fixed on the performance as Stregobor continues on, counting his fingers as he goes.

‘The sweet-natured Maribor girl with a smile like the sun - placed in Temeria. Sabrina Glevissig to Kaedwen. Artuad’s niece returned to the South, although that was hardly your doing in the end, was it? And of course your wildly wilful prodigy, sculpted from the mud of Vengerberg, pushing her way back to Aedirn without a thought for the world at large or a care for her creator. Such a _disappointment_ for you, I’d imagine, for all the promise she’d held; I don’t believe you’ve ever paid quite so much attention to a pupil.’

If Tissaia does make a reply to Stregobor, Yennefer does not hear it. The sound of her spell is dampened by the rising buzz of hundreds of voices as the crowd begins to murmur and laugh - this portion of the performance completed. She watches the robed singers leave the tiled arch in single file, disappearing into a hidden space between the hedges as quietly as they had arrived.

And Yennefer feels a sudden lurch in her chest as an all-too-familiar sad tune rises from the unseen musicians hidden behind the living walls of roses. The clear notes of a hammered dulcimer, cascading into a smooth melody, the soft accompaniment of a harp joining in, a clear invitation for dancers to assemble on the empty stage. 

She can’t help but watch Tissaia’s face for any perceptible reaction to the music. She wants to see a sign, something, _anything_ , that shows the woman is affected by the piece because it is the very same waltz that played almost a year earlier at the castle in Vengerberg, back when Tissaia had been in disguise and Yennefer had been too drunk on cider and distracted by a mysterious woman’s beauty to see the obvious.

Yennefer is disappointed - there is no change in Tissaia’s expression, and it is only when Hen Gedymdeith begins speaking to her that Tissaia shifts in her seat. When Yennefer picks up the voices again, she strains her hearing through the amulet to try and make out the words over the interference of the crowd.

‘Ah, The Dance of the Spheres - the masterpiece of Loc Muinne.’ Hen Gedymdeith is smiling. 'I recall a memorable evening with you, Tissaia, dancing it at the palace while you were placed there. Some time ago, now - but I have not forgotten the steps. You were as light-footed as ever, but I did worry that I was going to insult the elven hosts by bumping into one of them.’ 

He rises up out of his chair and extends a hand to the woman, the other held behind his back in a courtly manner. ‘Would you join me, my dear, for old time’s sake? I may not be an elven king, but I promise not to tread on your toes.'

Tissaia smiles fondly at him as she takes his arm, gracefully standing, her dress shining in the light of the paper lanterns, politely ignoring the excited whispers around them. The two mages move towards the dancers assembling on the tiled platform, the crowd parting to let them through, the pair being treated with the same respect that the royal newlyweds are being given on their route to the opposite side of the dais. 

Yennefer is not alone as her eyes follow their journey - Stregobor is also watching them, his thick eyebrows furrowed and his expression sour. Only Terranova does not seem to notice their departure, occupied with the tray of fresh pastries that a servant has just set down near his seat.

There are a few moments as the couples on the dais drift into two lines and the dance commences to the swelling of music. It’s a slower tempo than is typical for the set, and it’s clearly for the new queen’s benefit - the girl is obviously a novice to dancing, her movements too stiff and self-conscious to be anything but. King Vizimir doesn’t seem to mind her inexperience; he’s obviously taken with his new bride, never losing sight of her, smiling whenever she moves in the wrong direction, adjusting for mistakes with his own body to guide her back on the correct path. He loves her, it seems.

But Yennefer barely notices any of this - because she can’t tear her eyes away from the two mages as they expertly weave across the smooth stones with the familiarity of two people who have danced for centuries. 

Everything else, the music, the murmurs across the garden from the crowd, the sound of the fountain, fades away. A sharp wild thing flutters in her chest, beating against her ribs, flushed out of hiding at the sight of Tissaia in someone else’s arms. Her eyes follow the sweep of the hem of Tissaia’s dress as the woman steps lightly around the ring of couples before meeting back up with her partner. _They_ had danced it better, Yennefer thinks to herself as she watches the dance unfold, the circles growing larger with more couples, gaining speed.

(She wants to rush out to the floor, thrust the wizard aside and show this lurching crowd of courtiers what dancing _should_ be - the two bodies in perfect synchronization, gliding seamlessly to the smooth strands of music.)

‘I didn’t expect to see you sitting out this waltz, Yennefer...’

It is only by the skin of her teeth that Yennefer manages not to startle at the sound of a throaty voice behind her.

‘...I have it on good authority that you are an _excellent_ dancer.’

It is a woman who has spoken, and when Yennefer turns around, she finds the figure cast in shadow, standing on the stone path between the roses and the pond. She’s tall, with long black hair tied in a braid down her back, and the warm red silk of her gown flatters her olive-skin. Her eyes are sharp in the light of the lanterns across the water and the many narrow gold bracelets at her wrists glitter whenever she moves. Yennefer has met Philippa Eilhart only a few times before but she is well aware of the mage’s power and her influence over every aspect of Redania’s political and social structure. 

(Yennefer is instantly on guard. The fact that the woman can transform into an owl is a distraction - Philippa spins a web made of a thousand silken threads, and it is all too easy to be snared)

‘Forgive me,' Yennefer says, glancing back at the dais. 'I fear I am not in the mood for dancing tonight. I was glad to find a quiet place to spend the evening - and I was caught up in the scent of the roses - they put Aedirn's gardens to shame.'

Ignoring the obvious dismissal, Philippa tilts her head to one side. ‘I _had_ heard that Aedirn might have an heir on the way tonight.’ She hums pleasantly, moving slowly towards the bench and sits down next to Yennefer, leaning back on one hand, her long skirts shifting soundlessly. ‘Barring any _unfortunate_ events during the birthing,’ and she smiles without showing her teeth. ‘The path to being born is a perilous one for any child, particularly a royal one who cannot rule.’

Yennefer stays silent. The pause stretches out, the only sound being the drifting music from the dais, the motion of the colourfully dressed couples spinning in wide circles. When Philippa speaks again, her voice is pitched lower than before, and she keeps her eyes on the dancers.

‘You’ve never struck me as a particularly patient woman, Yennefer, so I shall spare you the _usual_ pleasantries that come before discussions such as these and speak plainly.’ A pause. ‘There was a magical outburst at the old elven fort in Sodden during the October full moon. By the time I portalled there, I found nothing but a dead horse being picked apart by crows and a bridge that radiated more chaos than Aretuza and Tor Lara put together. My attempt to detect an echo at the site failed and my spells do not fail.’

She turns to look at Yennefer, her brown eyes dark and all-too knowing. ‘I seek answers as to what might have transpired, and would be quite…’ she hesitates for a breath, before settling on, ‘... _grateful_ if you would peel back the particulars of this magical phenomenon. It has been wearing at me for quite some time now.’

‘Sodden Hill?’ Yennefer’s eyebrows knit together in an expression of thought. ‘I imagine I’d recall such an event had I participated in it but I fear nothing you have mentioned triggers any memory at all, Philippa. Forgive me - matters of state have taken up my time of late and I fear I have been quite distracted. Naturally I shall send word if I do remember anything that might be of use to you.'

Philippa snorts softly. 

The dancers are in the largest figure now, fanning out into the two rings facing each other, moving in opposite directions. A pause in the music, the long hanging note drawn out, before the figures slowly reverse and continue back along the pattern to smaller circles. Tissaia’s small form flows with deer-like grace from one figure to the next, returning to Hen Gedymdeith’s arms without any hesitation.

When Yennefer blinks, she finds Philippa studying her carefully. 

‘Then perhaps you will answer a personal curiosity of mine, Yennefer; what made you so special that Tissaia de Vries sought out your help for her mysterious task over that of any other? Triss Merigold recently shared with me her own memories of you from her days at school, and I must admit you seemed quite _ordinary_ , if marred by a more visible physical impairment than most of the girls who pass through those cold halls.’

Yennefer feels a light touch on her shoulder, fingers trailing down the back of her gown, following the shallow depressions on either side of her spine through the thin silk. ‘Not that you’d know it now,’ the woman intones, her alto voice a rich rumble in the myrrh-scented air. ‘Your outward appearance is certainly without flaw.’

The weight of her hand lingers on her bare scapula, but when there is no response from Yennefer, not even the twitch of a muscle, Philippa smiles and stretches forward to stand again. Yennefer watches as she moves towards the still-begging goldfish at the edge of the pond

'Your time in Aedirn is waning, and your bullheadedness will have you cast out of your precious court appointment even sooner than you think.’ The woman brushes her fingers gently against the surface, sending ripples in every direction, and the fish scatter, darting deeper into the clear water. ‘If you are truly desirous of something to correct Virfuril's inability to produce a son, I have a contact who could help. He is independent, and his prices are dear, but he could provide the certainty of a male heir. Virfuril is aging, and such a child would be in need for skilled guidance when his father passed.’ 

Philippa turns back to face Yennefer. ‘A prince would solidify your time in Aedirn for another generation - a _legacy_ of your own, so to speak. It would give you time to curb the distressing treatment of nonhuman Aedirnian citizens that has been so prevalent of late.’

‘Independent mages?’ Yennefer snorts, shifting her head so that her hair falls over one shoulder. ‘I need no help from some two-bit magician who peddles snake oil cures - and I imagine Virfuril’s determination for a son will continue until his queen is able to provide him with one.’

There is a period of silence after these words. Philippa watches her without expression.

‘Stubborn,’ she finally says. ‘You’d do well to learn the skill of making concessions. If you snap your teeth at the hand of every person who comes to you, you’ll eventually learn the true cost of being alone in this world.’ Philippa leans back against the edge of the pond, her arms loosely crossed. ‘You ignored my messenger back in Kagen - although I suppose it didn’t make a difference in the end. I would not advise that you make that same mistake twice.’

When Yennefer’s eyebrows rise, the mage shrugs.

‘Sending Djikstra to you was my doing, after all - I could not take the risk that the villages in the East would erupt in rebellion, and our mutual mentor has always preferred to do things herself.’

‘Save for vengeance,’ Yennefer snaps back unthinkingly. 

She regrets her outburst instantly. Philippa’s smile has only widened, and whatever darkness had clouded her expression earlier has vanished

‘My dear, for once your timing is _impeccable_. Perchance are you familiar with the milk thistle found in the mountains of Viravaro?’ She doesn’t wait for Yennefer to respond. ‘The crushed taproot of the plant yields an oil that is tasteless, but makes a particularly _effective_ purgative even in small doses.’

‘I suppose this is relevant to this evening’s fare?’ Yennefer looks towards the table of delicacies across the pond, surrounded by a glittering gaggle of laughing courtiers. ‘I generally prefer my food unspoiled by poisons, Philippa. It's a personal preference.’

The woman shrugs a shoulder delicately. 

‘I imagine anyone who wished to inflict such unpleasant effects would do so in a _targeted_ manner that would create maximum embarrassment for those unfortunate souls involved.’ She inclines her head slightly in the direction of where Stregobor is still sitting next to Terranova. ‘For instance, say that the tray recently delivered to the two gentlemen across the pond had been carelessly contaminated by milk thistle. I know that dear Artaud has finished the pastries, as the glutton always does, but I did see Stregobor eat several himself and I imagine he’ll be feeling the effects very soon, being of a more venerable age.’

Almost as soon as Philippa finishes these words, Stregobor suddenly shoots up from his seat, looking very pale. As they watch, he knocks over his own chair in his haste to walk quickly towards the nearest exit, holding his belly with an arm, the other hand grabbing onto the backs of chairs to hold himself upright. The man takes a half-dozen steps before he falls to his hands and knees and vomits violently onto the trimmed grass. 

There is a stunned silence and then a commotion as the guests in that section quickly move away like a retreating wave, giving the retching wizard a wide berth as he empties the contents of his stomach uncontrollably in direct view of hundreds of the Continent’s finest. After a solid minute of violent dry heaving, and a number of other distressing organic sounds, Stregobor manages to clamber back to his feet, sweaty and ill-looking, wiping at his mouth with a wide sleeve. His rapid departure from the garden is at a staggering half-stumble as he pushes his way through the mass of well-dressed and horrified people in the direction of the path through the rose bushes, a pained expression twisting his face, breaking into a jog the closer he gets to the exit. He is followed through the crowd by a wobbling Terranova, who looks equally uncomfortable, holding onto the back of his own robes. 

Philippa watches the scene with the faintest trace of satisfaction on her strong-featured face.

‘I could not resist a small taste of public vengeance - even if it is only that Stregobor spends the next few days attached to his privy, and that his embarrassment remains fresh in the minds of the nobles for the next decade or so. He is a useful coward, and that is the only reason he remains _alive_ \- I look unfavourably on those who send assassins after Tissaia de Vries.’

Instinctively, Yennefer looks over to the dance floor, before catching herself. It’s too late, because Philippa misses nothing, even in the near-dark.

‘You could find her in a forest even if you were blindfolded, couldn’t you?’ Philippa murmurs, her voice softly amused. ‘And don’t try to deny it, my dear - your eyes have hardly left her lovely form since you sat down. It’s obvious you hunger for her presence just as much as your king hungers for a son, even though the thought of needing anything or anyone _claws_ at your gut. Proud creature.’

Philippa reaches down and raises Yennefer’s chin with her fingers, searching her face, the gold bangles on her wrist sliding back, the metal strands gently ringing as they move against each other. 

‘I confess I had wondered if you’d been _responsible_ for whatever eruption was sparked last autumn at Sodden but it’s clear you nearly lost her to whatever magic she summoned that night, and despite the deep divide driven between you since then, you still care _very_ much what befalls her.’

Yennefer stares back up at her, her expression defiant and cold, feeling the prickling of Philippa’s mind on her own, probing for any weak spots, looking for any way in to see the secrets that she might be keeping from her. But Yennefer has spent a significant amount of her time since returning to Aedirn improving her psychic defences, unwilling to risk a repeat of Tissaia’s hated ability to sift through her mind like beach sand. She tamps down the natural urge to strike out, settling for firmly repelling Philippa back at every turn. In a very short time, having gained nothing, the woman pulls away, releasing Yennefer’s chin. 

‘I dare say that you’ve become a most _fascinating_ individual, Yennefer of Vengerberg. Please do keep in touch after your king throws you out of his court - I expect we might find some common ground on which to meet.' 

Smiling softly, Philippa begins to walk away, only to pause next to the hedge of cream-coloured roses.

‘You admired the roses - the flowers bloom continuously in Tregotor. No small amount of magic on my part, but the old king liked to walk the gardens in winter. I expect King Vizimir will have the hedges cut down and levelled after this display - his new wife is a pious woman and believes any pleasure of the senses is an invitation to sin, even from something as innocent as a flower.’

Philippa plucks a perfectly formed rose from the bush, carefully pinching the thorny stem with her fingernails to snap it off. She brings it up to her face and smiles at the scent.

‘The ones with thorns always smell so much sweeter than those without, don’t you think?’

—

Yennefer returns to Aedirn only to be greeted by the news of a dead newborn, a girl, delivered hours earlier. _Stillborn_ , she’s told by Fagin in the hallway outside the royal bedchambers, but the haunted eyes of the midwife and the queen’s maid tell a different story as they tend to the sleeping queen, drugged with soothing herbs. 

(The soothsayer’s corpse is already hung up on the castle wall for the crows, the head on a pike.) 

King Virfuril shuts himself in his study for two nights, and when he comes out, his first act is to ban divination from the kingdom. 

And then he goes hunting.

It is mere coincidence that the bodies of a dozen elvish women are found mauled the following week in the royal forest several hours outside of the city. _Wild dogs_ , the local magistrate claims - preying on runaways from the border mining camps.

Yennefer knows full well that a group of elves had been quietly moved by the King’s soldiers two days earlier from the camp to those very woods - the royal hunting grounds built by Virfuril’s tyrannical grandfather. The marks on the bloodied and naked bodies had been from the narrow jaws of hounds and from hunting spears. 

And it is then that Yennefer decides that she will leave Virfuril's heir up to fate. 

The potions she gives to Queen Kalis from that point onwards are nothing more than juice flavoured with herbs and honey. When Virfuril questions why his wife has yet to catch with child after many months of trying, Yennefer points to the rough birth suffered the year before. Two winters and a newborn girl later, Virfuril has exhausted his patience with the excuses of his court mage and the reproductive monotony of his queen’s womb.

Yennefer flees after burying the small body in the wet sand, her soaked skirts clinging to her legs, the sea salt stinging her eyes. She’s pushed to the edge of exhaustion by the multiple portals, the defensive expenditure of magic, and the desperate swim through the waves to shore - and doesn’t have the energy to do anything more than limp off the beach and into the parched hills. 

The hastily healed wound the assassin’s stiletto split through her lung is not the only reason her chest hurts with every breath. (She’s not running, she tells herself. She has not failed. It was _her_ choice.)

She presses away the pull she feels towards Aretuza, and instead goes south.

\---

The years stretch as Yennefer wanders across the Continent in pursuit of her newest goal. She moves from castles to desert camps, lives with druids and dryads, speaks with scholars in Oxenfurt and spends evenings with the finest of Novigradian whores. She overwinters in a forgotten library on a mountaintop, immersed in the ancient collection it holds, reading her way through hundreds of books. She gains knowledge and power and favour from foreign lands, but fails to find any real trace of a possible cure for her incomplete form. 

Her predicament is a unique one, it seems. 

(Yennefer knows deep down that while a child may not bring her satisfaction, it is the choice that she craves to be returned to her. She will not let herself be limited in anything in this life, not by ridiculous tradition, or by her body’s physical construction, or by a dusty circle of mages old enough to live with one foot in the grave.)

While committed to finding a cure to her incomplete form, Yennefer avoids treading in any of the larger courts of the kingdoms - she knows that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies to the Brotherhood just as much as any hulking creature hunting for prey. She learns to control her magical signature, masks her portals, and shields her steps as best she can.

Yennefer finds herself in Tregotor again after a number of years - having exhausted her own methods and contacts. Philippa greets her and gives her the name of the chronomancer who is able to bend the magics of time and chance. He is able to make a convincing demonstration of his ability to affect organ regeneration and fertility - for a sum that is out of the reach of the coffers of most Northern kingdoms, let alone an independent mage. 

Fortunately he takes instalments.

Yennefer finds herself wandering again - exchanging her skills in trade for coin. Her time in the free city of Novigrad had taught her that men will pay anything for the pleasure of a woman’s company, and a beautiful mage who can sift out and satisfy secret desires can earn more coin than anyone. She frees a village from bandits (the bandits had unwisely tried to steal her horse; the rescue of the villagers was incidental) saves a noblewoman from the sordid affections of a great uncle (she is paid handsomely), and relieves a number of wealthy men of their riches by ample application of her physical and magical charms. The pleasures of the flesh relieve the tedium of time after all, and are not at all unpleasant.

She’s settled herself in a manor in Rinde a dozen years since leaving Aedirn, convincing the stifled, selfish mayor of the wisdom of catering to her every whim with only a few tweaks to his mind along the way. The house is more comfortable than anywhere she’s been in the last year, and she has a night of revelry planned. The morning spent curing ailments, most of which stem from sexual desires and repression, has made her hungry for the same heady rush. 

It is late afternoon, and Yennefer’s preparing herself in her rooms - tracing along the contour of her lips with a soft sable brush - when she feels a portal open up behind her - the flicker of powerful magic betraying its maker before she even speaks.

(At first she can only stare, even as the woman’s mouth moves. Yennefer drinks in the sight of her reflection, feeling the rising warmth in her body, the familiar clenching in her chest.)

Tissaia, with her impeccable posture and all-too-knowing eyes, dressed in a green gown that shimmers in the shadows of the room like a school of bright-scaled fish. The cut of the dress is typical of her usual teaching attire, the scalloped collar tall and the bodice tight to her neck, but the glittering fabric is almost identical to that of the dress she’d worn at Virfuril’s wedding all those years ago, before their journey that had ended at the bridge. (It has to be a deliberate choice - Tissaia does not leave things up to chance, and is here only because she wants something from Yennefer.) 

‘I _inflict_ pain,' she corrects sharply when Tissaia’s words finally register.

‘My dear,' comes the voice that is all darkness and suggestion. 'You still think there’s a _difference_.’ 

Tissaia smiles then, a brief flash in the silvered mirror and Yennefer's heart stutters just a little to see it, because the smile is _genuine_. 

There is more talk of Aedirn - Yennefer had already known of Demavend, the young prince from Virfuril’s third wife, born several years before his death - and of Fringilla and of Nilfgaard, most of which she’s already aware of peripherally, but she’s too busy staring at Tissaia’s face, watching the flicker of her eyelids, following the curve of her cheekbones and the familiar sharp angle of her chin.

Finally, Yennefer can take no more. 

‘Why are you _here_?’ she bites out, her voice rising on the last word. The years have not dulled her resentment, but she needs answers. Tissaia owes her that much at least.

The pursing of lips, a quick turn away so Yennefer can’t see the expression on the beautiful face, a measured stroll to the canopied bed. The components are all here from that same stage of so many years ago in the inn - fireplace, bed, adjoining bath, candles.

‘You remained hidden for a while,’ Tissaia says as she sits down on the covers, stretching back to rest on her hands. Her body language is inviting and open, but Yennefer knows better. ‘But now you’re making _noise_.' A breath, a natural pause. 'You’re looking for something.’

Yennefer makes a show of selecting earrings as Tissaia continues, refusing to give her the satisfaction of attention. Noise. It would have been the events in Skellige just before Rinde, where she'd spent three months exploring the elemental magics of the priestesses. A useless endeavour, even after a desperate attempt to break into one of the sacred groves for the restorative magic it held, and the blood sacrifice she’d made had left her nearly unconscious. Her departure had been swift enough that she'd not had time to mask the magic of her portal, or the unpleasant situation she’d obviously left in her wake.

She cannot resist a waspish barb at Tissaia when she hears the woman’s warning about the Brotherhood’s tolerance for her behaviour. She's long since learned that the Chapter is all political posturing and ineffectual bluffing, with no real bite. They survive on their reputation, and on the gilded glories of magic they promise to the leaders or kingdoms. Yennefer knows her presence here likely interfering with some plot or another - there is no other reason that Tissaia would come after her, not after so long. (The idea that it could be a personal concern is laughable to say the least.)

So she’s all the more surprised when Tissaia pushes herself off the bed, and moves smoothly to stand at Yennefer’s back, laying her hands on Yennefer’s bare shoulders, the fine leather of her gloves cool against her exposed skin. Yennefer freezes like a startled deer at the contact, a breath trapped in her chest, her throat dry. She recognizes the danger in this intimacy and shores up her defences, shuttering any weak points in her own mind. But the searching through her thoughts does not come, and it is only Tissaia’s obvious bewilderment at Yennefer’s want of a cure that unsticks her tongue. 

She stands and pushes past Tissaia on her way to the dresser, ostensibly in search of gloves, as Tissaia spins her age-old argument of Aretuza as a stabilizing force to the world. The urgent plea that follows, ending with;

‘...You can use your talents to shape a new generation.’

Yennefer cannot help but huff out laugh at this inanity. _Teaching_. Trapped in a ridiculous mausoleum of magic, stifled and kept away from the light, surrounded by brine and rock and nothingness. Contained and cloistered and controlled. Tissaia at her side, naturally, simultaneously too close and too far away. 

It’s easy enough for Yennefer to channel the familiar clarity of cool rage and disdain. Her sneering retort about repayment is unkind, but she barely hears Tissaia’s reply as she turns fully to face her, wanting to _wound_ , to land any hurt she can, to get a little of her own back. ‘You’re afraid I’ll be everything you could never be... _without_ you. You only want me to do well as long as you had your hand in it.’

The silence that follows stretches longer and longer as they are left staring at each other across the room, bright opposing dark. An echo of the last time they spoke like this, divided by two yards of floor and twenty years of time.

‘How did we get this way?’ Tissaia, flawless, faultless Tissaia, has the audacity to look _hurt_ , her eyebrows knit, her voice soft and tight all at the same time. The slight shake of her head in bemusement, her hands clenched tightly in front of her waist. ‘I gave you all I could give. What more do you want?’

Yennefer meets her open gaze without expression. She knows what she wants - she’s had time and space to reflect on what lay between them all those years ago. Tissaia knows it too, she’d wager - omniscient creature that she is. 

( _Desire_ is roiling deep in Yennefer’s belly, hot and liquid and impossible to ignore. The urge to rush at Tissaia, to pin her wrists to the bed and strip her down to nothing, to taste her skin, to leave marks on her flesh. Wanting to relive the images and scents and feelings that Yennefer’s never quite been able to rid herself of - the soft breath against her ear, a cool hand tightening around her throat, warm sunlight against her back, surrounded by a dozen others entwined in a lustful public display.)

‘Everything.' 

Her voice is flat, and as she breezes past Tissaia, returning to sit at the vanity against the wall, she finishes with as much venom as she can muster, firmly shutting the door on any possible response. 

'You may _go_ , Rectoress. I have business to attend to.’

Yennefer doesn’t dare turn around to look at Tissaia’s face after that dismissal. She doesn’t want to see what her words have done, what wounds she has inflicted, because she knows she might break herself.

(She wonders whether Tissaia has ever allowed herself to be vulnerable with anyone other than Yennefer.)

But the portal opens behind her and Yennefer feels Tissaia disappear, and that is that.

The guest list for her evening's entertainment at the mayor’s house expands in size three-fold after a few commands to the charmed guards; Yennefer has excess energy to burn and needs the distraction of feeling the pleasures of others, anything that will wipe away the frustration and longing and guilt twisting inside of her. 

(She’s seen Tissaia naked and shivering and half-dead, but she’s never seen the woman look as raw as she had when Yennefer had thrown her words back in her face. She’d felt the woman’s fear too - it hadn’t been an act.)

And it is a cruel twist of fate, a mere handful of hours after Tissaia has left, that Yennefer finds herself ensnared in the inescapable current of another’s decisions, even if she doesn’t understand to what extent she’s been leashed to him until much later. 

(It is only after the dragon, after Geralt and she part for the last time in their many encounters - that Yennefer acknowledges that there may be a pattern to these two loves of her life - proudly independent, noble to the point of self-sacrifice, and both stubbornly determined to see the best in her.)

— 

Yennefer discovers that longevity comes with the price of boredom. And she has not managed to find anything that will survive and remember her after she is gone. Power has not been as filling as she had assumed, and she is truly alone in this world now. There will be no legacy for her. 

She watches the elves diminish, and the other races also, limited by ever-expanding regulations of the human lands. Nilfgaard continues to rise, swallowing each of the Southern kingdoms one by one. 

Vilgefortz catches her at just the right moment in Nazair, moments after fresh rejection (the closing of yet another door), and his lure is irresistible.

—

The camp at Sodden Hill is quiet, the stillness broken by the rare snort of a mule or the rippling sound of cloth in the wind. The mages have retreated to beds made of blankets, exhausted after the three day journey by ship and on foot and the expenditure of magic on the crumbling keep’s defences. The late summer night is just warm enough to make sleeping bearable and the empty sacks laid out by the refugees do a decent job insulating from the cool ground.

Yennefer aimlessly wanders through the make-shift camp, unable to settle down to sleep. She’s left Triss sleeping by the fire - they’d spent several hours catching up on decades apart (she's missed it - talking to a friend, an equal). Philippa Eilhart features prominently in Triss’s affections - and Yennefer doesn’t ask after Geralt. It’s painful to think of the man, let alone speak of him with a woman who seems to recall him with such open fondness. Instead she had told Triss tales of her decades spent wandering the Continent until the woman slipped off into a deep sleep. 

The clouds over Sodden Hill have cleared, and distant stars glisten in the darkness above. Only a few sentries now roam the crumbling keep walls, a handful of others still busy fletching arrows by candlelight. The folk of Sodden and the refugees of Cintra, a single desperate stand against the tide.

It’s absurd, Yennefer thinks. She shouldn’t be here - she could be anywhere else, away from the troubles of kings and kingdoms, peasants and puppeteering 500-year-old sorceresses. She could find a castle of her own, a noble to bend to her will, and live in comfort and obscurity until the end of time.

This rough truce with Tissaia chafes at her, even if they haven’t spoken together more than a handful of times since they set out on this journey four days earlier, and never in private. The pleading look in the woman’s eyes in the Council hallway comes back to her whenever Yennefer closes her own. The brief chat earlier in the evening had only given Yennefer more to brood over. However adamant Tissaia had been, she’s not sure she does have more to give. 

(This is to be the end, she thinks to herself.)

The change to deeper darkness around her catches her eye and she looks up to find that she’s moved under the arch of the gatehouse, the cracked walls held up by ancient, rotting timbers. She’s standing on the first stone forming the south side of the bridge across the chasm, a wide streak of white in the surrounding darkness. 

And she’s not alone. 

Beyond, under the open sky, a familiar figure is standing, straight-backed, at the midpoint of the bridge.

(She’d sensed the woman’s magic, Yennefer realizes, and been unconsciously drawn here.)

Swallowing her reservations, pressing away the desire to turn back to the courtyard and retreat to a pile of rough wool blankets and the hollow bliss of ignorance, Yennefer takes a small breath and walks out onto the open expanse.

Tissaia is standing next to the white parapet at the very center of the bridge, looking across the span of canyon towards the west. Her arms are loosely clasped together, and she looks unnaturally small against the star-filled sky and the jagged mountains beyond. 

Yennefer feels a sharp ache at the sight as her mind flashes back to a night almost thirty years ago, the night of the full moon, and the lightning, and the cold, whispering ship that had terrified her and drawn her closer to the brink.

'You once told me that everything ends,’ she announces, her voice breaking the silence. 

Tissaia makes no outward sign that she’s noticed Yennefer’s approach - not even a glance to her left. Her gaze remains fixed on the horizon. The night breeze has loosened some of the strands of hair from her chignon and the woman’s angular features are softened by this imperfection. Stillness and solemnity personified.

'You fear for Aretuza tonight.’ Yennefer continues, closing the distance between them until she’s standing an arm’s length away. ‘Or is there another point of interest towards the sea that draws your eye? The elves? They have long since fled - or been conscripted by Nilfgaard. It cannot be the unicorns - they were already hunted to extinction well before my time. And why worry about anyone at this point - I have heard convincing evidence from the Novigrad scholars that the cracking ice in the north will eventually swallow the land in an all-consuming frost. It will make all these petty squabbles over land and lineage seem rather foolish.’

She hears the soft exhalation before the woman speaks. It’s a sigh that holds the weariness of one who has gone against the Brotherhood, carrying the fight for the fate of the world to the middle of nowhere, leading a cluster of mages across the ocean because it is the right thing to do.

'I fear for our world, Yennefer. Why else do you think I would have asked you to come with us?'

Yennefer leans on the parapet, resting her weight on her forearms, hands together. She looks down into the deep depths of the canyon below them, listening to the rushing of the river.

'How is it that every time you seek my help, Tissaia, I inevitably find myself on this ancient heap of stones? I would hope that this adventure has fewer unpleasant surprises than the last chase you lead me on.'

She feels more than sees Tissaia’s smile in the dark, hears the rustle of the thick silk of her skirts as the woman shifts in place. 

‘You could have simply refused - you've never had difficulty doing so before.'

(Vilgefortz had asked her a similar question on the boulder-strewn beach two mornings earlier - questioning Yennefer’s reasons for coming at all - but the very reason is standing in front of her, proud and beautiful under the stars.) 

Tissaia had begged, and Yennefer had (foolishly) followed.

 _Vilgefortz_. 

Yennefer can feel the smooth edge of a protective barrier to prevent eavesdropping - magical or otherwise - that surrounds them, tingling against her skin. Tissaia’s doing, of course. The shielding sheds the attention of any not invited to see inside and is confirmation that the woman _wants_ her here.

(It makes Yennefer bold.) 

'Finished with your dashing military leader then?' she asks in a teasing tone, leaning closer to the wall of the bridge, looking askance at Tissaia through the heavy fall of her hair. ‘With all your talk of the importance of _living_?’

Tissaia snorts softly. 

‘I believe I already gave you my answer on that subject.'

Yennefer’s mouth twists into a half smile, slipping through against her will. It is impossible to ignore the warm blossom of relief she feels at those words, filling her body with slowly spreading heat.

'Triss will be disappointed,‘ she says lightly, examining her nails. It’s a ridiculous choice given the darkness - she can barely see her fingers. ‘She was _so_ hoping for a matched parental set. She’s never quite stopped holding onto your skirts, it seems.'

Tissaia hums, and the pleasant sound resonates deep within her. Her gloved hand moves up to catch hold of the dull pendant of Aretuza sitting against her chest, a familiar gesture of old. Yennefer hadn’t expected to miss it.

‘While you may not view me as a teacher any longer, Yennefer, and certainly never in the maternal light you accuse Triss Merigold of; there is a final lesson I must impart to you before the coming battle.’

Yennefer’s expression tightens instantly.

'I told you once before that I would not take on that responsibility, Tissaia,’ she says, her voice heavy with warning, straightening to her full height, turning towards the woman. ‘Believe me when I say that my answer has _not_ changed with time.’

But Tissaia shakes her head. 

'Peace, Yennefer,’ she says quietly. ‘It is not the enchantment you are thinking of, but rather one more pertinent to the fight ahead of us. A linking spell - old but reliable - used to coordinate groups. It requires a disciplined mind and an iron will to prevent the loss of a sense of self in the noise of many. It will be of value in gathering our collective powers to their greatest potential.'

Yennefer leans back against the parapet. A slow grin creeps across her face.

‘I never thought I should live to see the day you called me _disciplined_ , Tissaia,’ she says wryly. Yennefer cranes her neck to look up at the distant heavens, feeling the stretch of muscles from the base of her skull across her upper back. She wants to laugh at the absurdity of all this. ‘Will wonders never cease?’

‘Strong-minded, then,’ Tissaia amends. Her expression settles into seriousness, and there is the briefest of hesitations before she says 'I shall need to show you the spell in the elvish fashion - I fear we haven't the time for traditional lessons.'

A muscle in Yennefer’s jaw twitches. Wherever they are now, in this tenuous truce brought by time if not mutual understanding, _trust_ between them has always been uneasy at the best of times. And she knows how the knowledge will have to be taught - in the manner of the elves, a race that was once so peaceful to the point of sharing thoughts without a care for their own privacy.

She stares up at the sky, at the faint flickers of starlight above, thinking for almost a minute before she finally looks back to the woman and gives the barest of nods.

Tissaia slowly tugs off one of her leather gloves, one finger at a time, and moves it to her left hand, her clear gaze never leaving Yennefer’s face. With the same care that one might use to touch the head of a spooked horse, she raises her hand to Yennefer's scalp just above her left ear. Her fingers span specific points of contact; thumb anchored on her cheekbone, index finger to temple, middle and ring and little fingers a crescent behind her ear. 

Yennefer’s eyelids flicker at the tickling touch through her loose hair, the flush of pleasure it elicits. She wonders idly whether Tissaia has ever had lasting effects from the frostbitten fingers she’d healed all those years ago. She wants to know if Tissaia feels what Yennefer is feeling, and then almost chuckles because she will _know_ soon enough.

‘Closer, Yennefer,’ she hears Tissaia murmur in the dark, her low voice sparking a quiet thrill down Yennefer’s spine. ‘This magic does require a degree of contact and we are no longer of a like height.’

Exhaling through her nose, a steadying breath to still her racing heart, Yennefer leans forward slightly, closing the space between them until their foreheads are barely touching. She feels Tissaia move her hair with the thumb of the hand on her temple, a gentle brush against her skin, watches the woman’s eyes slide shut, and after a quiet breath to settle herself, feeling the same against her own face Yennefer follows her unspoken invitation to enter her mind.

(Time is measured in breaths.)

Yennefer is not a novice to exploring the thoughts of others, she has had more than half a century to master the skill of manipulating minds and bending people to her will, but she feels trepidation as she ventures towards the bright presence ahead. 

It isn’t the routine sorting through the simple mind of a human, or even the sharply focused one of a Witcher - because there is a natural complexity to the thoughts of mages - coloured by the surge of chaos. While Tissaia’s consciousness is predictably ordered and neat, the surging power she holds in her control is staggering to the point of distraction. Yennefer finds herself being pulled towards the center of the maelstrom of churning potential that exists inside the other woman’s body, consumed by the urge to challenge it, and to _conquer_. 

But there is already a clear path delineated for her, smoothing and settling Yennefer’s inflexible mind into receptivity, guiding her in a different direction along a bridge of thought. Once she has been steadied and allowed the time necessary to find her balance in this strange mindscape, Yennefer finds herself being led through the set patterns of the casting. It’s a bizarre parody of a partnered dance, learning the motions, feeling the flow of power to weave into the spell. Tissaia’s thoughts are gentle in corrections, deftly changing the enunciation of a word here and an application of force there. Yennefer picks it up quickly - bolstered by the challenge, and it is only a scant amount of time - several hundred breaths at most - before she knows the spell of linking. 

Yennefer breathes in through her nose and then out through her mouth as she slips back into herself, reluctant to leave the warm familiarity she’s had a tantalizing glimpse of. (And she finally knows with absolute certainty what Tissaia feels for her now, that depth of tenderness under the hardened shell. How much she knows. How much she _cares_.)

The return to the physical realm is not a pleasant one - the night air has cooled and the sharpness of the breeze has set into Yennefer’s skin through the fabric of her dress, but she barely notices because Tissaia has shifted closer still. A pale hand sweeps her brow, the short nails combing through Yennefer’s loose hair, brushing it away from her cheek. 

Yennefer’s breath catches as she feels the light press of a close-lipped kiss to the corner of her mouth. (She had known, she had known that the transfer would go both ways, and just as she felt Tissaia's emotions, so the woman had felt hers)

‘Life is not all pain and heartbreak, Yennefer.’ Tissaia murmurs against her cheek in a low voice, her soft lips brushing her skin as she speaks. ‘I would have you learn some happiness beyond the battle ahead.’

‘All the more reason to live tonight?’ Yennefer echoes at the same quiet pitch, gently nudging Tissaia’s forehead with her own. She can smell the faint floral scent the woman is wearing, one she’s never quite found a match to in all her wanderings across the world. 

Tissaia draws back slightly, and her smile reaches her eyes, the corners crinkling into fine lines. An honest expression. Yennefer’s stubborn resolve cracks and she finds herself sliding her hands up past Tissaia’s shoulders, over the thick rippled fabric of her dress, rough and smooth at the same time, loosely catching either side of the woman’s sharp jaw between her cupped hands, gaze fixed on the curve of her lips.

Speech isn’t necessary. (And Yennefer isn’t quite ready to voice those things out loud. Not yet. There’s still the deep hurt, and the sharp yearning that’s etched into her every thought and memory of this woman, even after half a century.)

So she kisses Tissaia instead, pouring every emotion she’s ever felt since Rinde, since waking up in the guild inn in Brugge, since the horror of the ice-covered bridge and the ship from beyond the yawning portal, since the warm sunroom in Sodden surrounded by whores and lustful buyers, since drifting across the dance floor in Vengerberg more gracefully than any other couple alive, _all of it_ into Tissaia’s unlocked and open mind. Because in the long stretch of Yennefer’s life, Tissaia has been both the source of her greatest frustrations and one of the few things in this world she has never had her fill of, and Yennefer wants so much _more_. 

And so there is a fierce surge of joy when Tissaia meets her touch for touch, her bare fingers slipping down her neck to the join of the collar of her gown, the other gloved hand entwined in her loose hair, gently guiding Yennefer back against her smaller body, reassuringly solid.

Yennefer, who has many fears that she has tried to suppress, who has spent much of her life feeling used and unwanted, finds herself softening.

—

It is some time later, but still much too soon for Yennefer’s liking, when Tissaia lifts her chin and brushes her nose against her own. Yennefer hums deep in her throat in protest, knowing what this means. She's not ready to part yet - to slip loose of this new intimacy, and she wants _more_ \- to be saturated with satisfaction before she even thinks about letting go. 

'Join me,' she urges, her splayed hands pulling Tissaia's waist close to her own.

( _Don’t leave me_ , she thinks to herself desperately.)

Tissaia kisses her again, sweetly, and Yennefer can feel the woman’s lips curled into a smile against her own.

'We will talk when this is all over because there are things we need to discuss, but I would have you rest before the battle ahead,’ Tissaia murmurs as she draws away, her eyes meeting Yennefer’s own, her gaze warm and fond and sad. Another slow caress to her cool cheek with a bare palm, tracing the path of her jawline. ‘And if you would allow me to ask anything of you, Yennefer - _live_.' 

(And if this is to be the end of her life, be it tomorrow or the next, on a field of grass or in an ancient keep of crumbling stones, then perhaps it has not ended so badly after all, Yennefer supposes. She knows without a doubt that she is wanted and needed by another, and that she is _loved_.)

—

It is later, surrounded by the bodies of countless others, the air smelling of smoke and flame and blood, foreheads pressed together in a desperate echo of the night before (Tissaia smelling wrong - too _metallic_ ) - that Yennefer realizes that the woman does not expect to survive this battle.

(Stubborn creature that she is, she won’t let Tissaia sacrifice herself this time.)

In the end she finds herself drawing from the distant bridge’s magic, fighting it, wresting away the protective spells she’d watched being woven twenty five years earlier, swallowing the heat of the burning keep into her own body until she’s _brimming_ with potential, she finds the brief moment of balance she’d glimpsed in Tissaia’s mind. The moment of centered calm in the rolling sea, carried up on the steep slope of a wave about to crash into foam.

And when Yennefer unleashes the flames at the swarming soldiers ahead in the dark, roaring her wordless cry of challenge, she curves the chaos around a single figure cowering in the grass and crashes against the thousands beyond with a fury.

\--

She's on her back and everything is blurred and dimly lit and her whole body aches. She moves to wipe at her face only to find a damp cloth that smells strongly of herbs draped over them. 

Pushing the cloth away, Yennefer finds her vision is blurred and unfocused, but she can see well enough to know she’s inside a tent, and when she raises her head - stiff and spinning - she discovers she’s not alone - there are others here too - coughing and groaning softly in pain. A number of beds covered entirely by linen shrouds over too-still shapes. 

Yennefer’s eyes find Philippa Eilhart’s tall form among the moving attendants, crouched (caring, concerned) over Triss’s burned body on blankets near the center of the tent several yards away. This small movement makes her all the more dizzy, and her head drops back to the rough sack of grain that forms the makeshift pillow. 

Her left hand is caught by something and when the room stops spinning on its axis, she looks down.

Tissaia. She’s fallen asleep, kneeling on the ground beside her, leaning against the knee-high edge of the canvas cot. There’s soot and dried blood on her face, and her dark hair is in disarray. Her small hand - ungloved - is loosely entwined with Yennefer’s own. Her back rises and falls, the respirations reassuringly steady.

(Impossibly, incandescently alive. The quivering, shivering thing in her chest _hums_ with delight.)

Smiling, Yennefer reaches out and tucks one of the wisps of soft hair behind Tissaia’s ear. She watches the flicker of lashes that follows the tickling touch, the tensed line of her neck under the collar of her ruined gown.

‘I broke your bridge,' she whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're at the end. Thank you for following along - I did enjoy writing this, even if it the chapters multiplied. I should warn you that there won't be a sequel to this, there are a number of good post-Sodden fics out there already. 
> 
> I'd love to hear any thoughts or questions you might have, even if it's only 'so where did the grey gelding Yennefer rode end up?'


End file.
